Black Color Codes (Shades of Black)

Black comes in many near-blacks: warm licorice and raisin black, cool charcoal and outer space, and almost-pure onyx and vampire black. This page lists 17 named blacks — the CSS keyword black plus jet, onyx, charcoal, ebony, licorice, eerie black and more — with HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, CMYK and OKLCH codes, tints, the contrast each reaches as text on white, and notes on rich black for print.

How to use this tool

1. Choose a shade of black from the list.
2. Copy its HEX, RGB or HSL code; check "As text on white" for body text.
3. Use the tints table for dark grays in the same family.
4. For print, ask your printer about rich black for large black areas.

Formula

tint = c + (255 − c) × p · contrast = (L₁ + 0.05) ÷ (L₂ + 0.05)

c is each RGB channel, p the mixing amount; L is WCAG relative luminance, and the ratio is truncated to two decimals as WCAG requires. Black on white is the maximum, 21:1.

Example

Jet #343434 = rgb(52, 52, 52) is a neutral dark gray with lightness 20.4%; in simple CMYK it is 0%, 0%, 0%, 79.6%. Eerie black #1B1B1B as text on white reaches 17.22:1, still far above the 7:1 AAA level, while pure black gives 21:1.

Rich black versus 100% K

On a press, black ink alone (K 100%) prints as a slightly washed-out dark gray on large areas. A rich black adds cyan, magenta and yellow under the black — a common recipe is C60 M40 Y40 K100 — for a deeper, denser black. Use it for backgrounds and big headlines only: small text in four inks blurs if the plates are even slightly misaligned, so body text stays plain K 100%. Total ink must stay within the printer's limit, roughly 240–330% depending on the paper — ask for their figure.