Information about Gray (color)

This article is about the color. For other uses, see Grey (disambiguation) and Gray (disambiguation).

Grey/Gray
<imagemap>Image:Information-silk.png|About these coordinates rect 0 0 50 50 About these coordinates desc none</imagemap>— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#808080
sRGBB	(r, g, b)	(128, 128, 128)
Source		HTML/CSS[1]
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Grey or gray (see spelling differences) describes any color between black and white. Collectively, white, black, and the range of greys between them are known as achromatic colors or neutral colors. Greys are seen commonly in nature and fashion. Grey paints can be created by mixing complementary colors (that is colors directly opposite on the color wheel, e.g. yellow and violet). In the RGB color model used by computer displays, it is created by mixing red, green, and blue light. Images which consist wholly of neutral colors are called monochrome, black-and-white or greyscale.

Grey in color theory

Most grey pigments have a cool or warm cast to them, as the human eye can also detect even a minute amount of saturation. Yellow, orange and red will create a "warm grey". Green, blue, or purple, will create a "cool grey".^[2] When no cast at all, it is referred to as "neutral grey" or simply "grey".

WARM GREY	COOL GREY
Mixed with 6% yellow.	Mixed with 6% blue.

Two colors are called complementary colors if grey is produced when two colors are combined. Grey is its own complement. Consequently, grey remains grey when its color spectrum is inverted, and therefore has no opposite, or alternately is its own opposite.

Artists sometimes use the two different spellings to distinguish between strict combinations of black and white versus combinations that do have elements of hue.

Web colors

There are several shades of grey available for use with HTML and CSS in word form, while there are 254 true greys available through Hex triplet. All are spelled with an a: using the e spelling can cause unexpected errors with outdated browsers (this discrepancy was inherited from the X11 color list). The three "slategray" colors are not themselves on the greyscale, but are slightly saturated towards cyan (green + blue). Note that since there are an even (256, including black and white) number of unsaturated shades of grey, there are actually two grey tones straddling the midpoint in the 8-bit grayscale. Both color names, "gray" and "grey", have been assigned the lighter of the two shades (128 also known as #808080), due to rounding up.

HTML Color Name Sample Hex triplet (rendered by name) (rendered by hex triplet) lightgray #D3D3D3 gray #808080 darkgray #A9A9A9 dimgray #696969 lightslategray #778899 slategray #708090 darkslategray #2F4F4F

Color coordinates

RGB

Grey values result when r = g = b, for the color (r, g, b)

CMYK

Grey values are produced by c = m = y = 0, for the color (c, m, y, k). Lightness is adjusted by varying k. In theory, any mixture where c = m = y is neutral, but in practice such mixtures are often a muddy brown (see CMYK#Why black ink is used).

HSL and HSV

Greys result whenever s is 0 or undefined, as is the case when v is 0 or l is 0 or 1

Grey/Gray in human culture

Caffeinated Drinks

• Earl Grey tea is a popular caffeinated drink, often served at tea time.

Environmentalism

• Greys has been used pejoritavely by environmentalists to describe technophiles as being those who like granite, concrete and other city materials, as opposed to using the term "greens" to describe those in favor of environmentalism.

Ethics

• In a moral sense grey is either used
• pejoratively to describe situations that have no clear moral value, or
• positively to balance an all-black or all-white view (for example, shades of grey = magnitudes of good/bad).

Folklore

• In folklore, grey is often associated with goblin folk of several kinds. Scandinavian folklore often depicts their gnomes and nisser in grey clothing. This is partly because of their association with dusk, partly because these races, including elves (see below), often are outside moral standards (black or white).

Gerontology

• Whilst the hair actually becomes white as one ages, it is often misinterpreted as grey (white next to others colors looking comparatively darker), and hence grey is associated with the elderly, and has inspired the name of the Gray Panthers and expressions such as Grey pound.
• Hence the inspiration for the song "The Old Gray Mare", and punning reference such as the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the double-play-on-words title The Old Grey Hare.

Journalism

• The "Grey Lady" is the nickname of the New York Times

Literature / Film / Music

• In J. R. R. Tolkien's works:
• Gandalf is called the Grey Pilgrim.
• The Grey Havens
• The Grey Elves
• Ered Mithrin, the Grey Mountains. Tolkien chose the color grey from folklore tradition mentioned above.
• The Noldor and the Dúnedain typically have grey eyes.
• In Michael Ende's Momo, the men in grey are malicious spirits who prey on people's time and trick them into "saving" it.
• In Don DeLillo's 1985 novel White Noise, the inventor of Dylar is at first only referred to as Mr. Gray.
• In The T*Witches series, those of magical power are described as having grey eyes.
• Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two seminal sword-and-sorcery fantasy heroes created by Fritz Leiber.
• A purposely nonsensical line in Paul Simon's song "I Do It For Your Love": "We were married / On a rainy day / The sky was yellow / And the grass was gray."
• Gray Lady Down, an action film about a stranded submarine.
• The Brenin Llwyd, the eponymous antagonist of The Grey King, by Susan Cooper.
• Rand al'Thor of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is described as having grey eyes
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
  

Military

• Grey was the color of the Confederate Army uniforms in the American Civil War, a war sometimes called "The Blue and the Grey".
• Feldgrau (field grey) was a common color of Wehrmacht uniforms.
• Urban camouflage is composed of patches of shades of grey, while woodland camouflage uses ranges of brown and green.

Nanotechnology

• Grey goo refers to a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all living matter on Earth while building more of themselves (a scenario known as ecophagy). ^[3]

Nazi Germany

• Martin Bormann was called the grey eminence (a phrase which originated as a description of François Leclerc du Tremblay, the French monk who served as advisor to Cardinal de Richelieu) because as the executive secretary to Adolf Hitler, he amassed great power behind the scene due to the fact that he was the one who controlled access to the Führer. ^[4]

Neurology

• The substance that composes the brain is referred to as "grey matter", and for that reason the color is associated with things intellectual.

Parapsychology

• It has been asserted that those who are suffering from the mental illness of depression have grey auras. ^[5]

Parties

• A "grey person" is someone who goes unnoticed, a wallflower.

Psychology

• The color grey represents pessimism whereas its opposite, optimism, is represented by the color rose.
• A concept that is in a Grey area is a concept about which one is unsure what category in which to place it.

Religion

• In the Christian religion, grey is the color of ashes, and therefore a biblical symbol of mourning and repentance, described as sackcloth and ashes. It can be used during Lent or on special days of fasting and prayer.

Sexuality

• In the bandana code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a grey bandana means that one is into the fetish of bondage.
• In gay slang, a grey queen is a gay person who works for the financial services industry (this term originates from the fact that in the 1950s, people who worked in this profession often wore grey flannel suits).^[6]

Sociology

• Grey symbolizes mediocrity, the background noise of society.

Sonics

• Grey noise is random noise subjected to a psychoacoustic equal loudness curve (such as an inverted A-weighting curve) over a given range of frequencies, giving the listener the perception that it is equally loud at all frequencies.

Sports

• There was once a football bowl game featuring a northern squad vs. a southern squad, and known as the Blue-Gray Game.
• Grey Cup, emblematic of the championship of the Canadian Football League, so named not because it has not been polished for awhile, but for its donor, Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey.

Television

• The Grey Council consists of the nine leaders of the Minbari in the Babylon 5 universe.

UFOs

• Tiny grey aliens, with large, tear-shaped black eyes are referred to as "little greys" in popular UFO conspiracy theories and in science-fiction.

See also

• List of colors
• Payne's grey
• Davy's grey
• Grisaille
• Black and White Photography

References

Web colors	black	gray	silver	white	red	maroon	purple	fuchsia	green	lime	olive	yellow	orange	blue	navy	teal	aqua

•  • [ e]
Grey	Arsenic	Bistre	Black	Charcoal	Davy's grey	Eigengrau	Feldgrau	Liver	Payne's grey	Sable	Seal brown
						no swatch				no swatch
Silver	Slate grey	Super black	Taupe	Purple Taupe	Medium Taupe	Taupe grey	Pale Taupe	White
		no swatch