Color Name Finder

Enter a hex code or pick a color to see the closest named colors, ranked by how similar they look to the eye.

Closest name: Venetian GlassΔE 0.51

  • Venetian Glass

    #9cb08a ΔE 0.51 difference

  • Easy Green

    #9fb289 ΔE 0.98 difference

  • Soap Green

    #a0b28e ΔE 1.33 difference

  • Cardoon

    #9aae8c ΔE 1.53 difference

  • Haven

    #a3b48c ΔE 1.67 difference

  • Basilisk

    #9ab38d ΔE 1.94 difference

  • Easygoing Green

    #98b389 ΔE 2.27 difference

  • Huntington Garden

    #96a782 ΔE 2.33 difference

ΔE is the perceptual difference between two colors: the smaller the number, the more alike they look.

  • Under 1 — the difference is invisible to the eye.
  • Between 1 and 2 — noticeable on close inspection.
  • Above 5 — clearly a different color.

What the color name finder does

Type or pick a color and this tool returns the closest named colors from a fixed index, each with the perceptual difference that separates it from the color you entered. The closest name is a real color from that list, not a label invented on the spot.

Where the 32,521 names come from

The index holds 32,521 named colors, collected from three open sources:

  • CSS color keywords — the named colors defined by the CSS specification, such as tomato or rebeccapurple.
  • The xkcd color survey — the names thousands of readers gave when asked to label random colors, from "dusty teal" to "puke brown".
  • The color-name-list project — an MIT-licensed collection that gathers names from many further sources.

Some names carry an alternate spelling or a second label. Those aliases are stored with the color, but only the primary name is shown here.

How the closest name is chosen

Colors are compared in CIELAB, a space built to approximate how the eye sees, and the difference between two of them is measured with CIEDE2000 — the formula that accounts for how perception shifts across hue, lightness and saturation. The list is ordered by that number, smallest first.

Two colors are never compared by subtracting their hex codes. Hex is just how the numbers are stored, so using it as a distance would misjudge almost every pair: #000000 and #0000ff are adjacent as text and nothing alike as color.

Common questions

How does the tool find a color name?

It measures the perceptual distance (ΔE, the CIEDE2000 metric) between your color and every named color in the index, then shows the smallest ones. The first result is the closest name.

Why is the closest name not exactly my color?

Because the index is a fixed set of colors: unless your color is one of its 32,521 entries, no name describes it exactly. The ΔE says how far the closest name is — under 1 means the difference is invisible.

What does the ΔE number mean?

ΔE is the perceptual difference between two colors. Under 1 is invisible to most people, 1 to 2 is noticeable on close inspection, and above 5 is clearly a different color.

Where do the color names come from?

From the CSS color keywords, the xkcd color survey and the MIT-licensed color-name-list project, merged into one index of 32,521 names and matched with CIEDE2000.