Information about Black Charcoal color
Basic facts about this digital color
The color #212121 reads as a softly muted neutral grey and leans clearly toward the dark side. Designers typically reach for tones like this for night-mode interfaces and high-contrast pairings with light text. In The Official Register of Color Names it is practically indistinguishable from Plock Gray (#232224). Its next-closest registered neighbors are Blackjack (#1D2020) and Raisin Black (#242124).
Under the hood all three RGB channels are equal (33 each), placing #212121 exactly on the neutral axis of the color space. If you plan to put text on a #212121 background, choose white — the contrast ratio is 16.1:1 (passing WCAG AAA), while black manages only 1.3:1. On paper it relies strongly on black ink (K:87), so proof dark layouts before a large print run. This precise shade carries the officially registered name "Black Charcoal" in the Register.
Black Charcoal color variations
View this color variations of tints, shades, tones and hues.
Black Charcoal color tints
Tints look brighter, pastel, and less intense.
Black Charcoal color shades
Shades look darker, richer, and more solid.
Black Charcoal color tones
Tones looks more sophisticated and complex than base colors.
Why this page shows fewer blocks
Black Charcoal belongs to the Greyscale Color Family, and greyscale colors have no hue. Hue is an angle on the color wheel, and that angle only exists when a color leans toward one primary more than the others. Here all three channels are equal (R = G = B), so there is nothing to lean and no angle to measure.
Everything built on rotating that angle therefore has nothing to rotate. A complementary color is the hue 180° away — for a grey, that is the same grey. The same goes for analogous, triadic, tetradic and square harmonies. Rather than show seven identical swatches, the register leaves the Hues variation strip and the whole Harmonies section out.
What remains is everything that depends on lightness rather than hue. Tints, shades and tones still work, because they move the color up and down the scale instead of around the wheel. So do the nearest named colors, the conversions and the adjacent color codes.
How the register classifies colors · All greyscale colors in the register
Alternatives to Black Charcoal color
View adjacent and very similar colors.
Nearest named colors to Black Charcoal
The closest officially registered color names in the Register, ordered by similarity.
#232224
#1D2020
#242124
#252321
#26211F
#27221F
#1C1D1F
#252525
#282020
#1A2421
#24221A
#1C1C1E
Black Charcoal color backgrounds & wallpapers
Download color wallpaper / background for your Desktop PC, Tablet or Mobile phone.
Conversions between color systems and etc.
- HEX#212121
- RGB33, 33, 33
- CMYK0, 0, 0, 87
- CSSrgb(33, 33, 33)
- HSL0°, 0%, 13%
- HSL Precise0°, 0%, 12.941%
- HSV0°, 0%, 13%
- HSB0°, 0%, 13%
- Normalized R (0.0–1.0)0.129
- Normalized G (0.0–1.0)0.129
- Normalized B (0.0–1.0)0.129
- GLSLvec3(0.129, 0.129, 0.129)
- GLSL with alphavec4(0.129, 0.129, 0.129, 1.000)
- HLSL / Metalfloat3(0.129, 0.129, 0.129)
- Percentage of Red in RGB12.9%
- Percentage of Green in RGB12.9%
- Percentage of Blue in RGB12.9%
- Color FamilyGreyscale
- Saturation FamilyDesaturated
- Lightness FamilyDark
- HEX ID212121
- DECIMAL ID2171169
- Name Length14
- This page visited309 times
- Counting from2025-01-01
