Shades of black
colours that differ only slightly from pure black
Shades of black, or off-black colors, are colors that differ only slightly from pure black. These colors have a low lightness. From a photometric point of view, a color which differs slightly from black always has low relative luminance. Colors often considered "shades of black" include onyx, black olive, charcoal, and jet.
These colors may be considered for part of a neutral color scheme, usually in interior design as a part of a background for brighter colors. Black and dark gray colors are powerful accent colors that suggest weight, dignity, formality, and solemnity.
In color theory, a shade is a pure color mixed with black. It decreases its lightness while nearly conserving its chromaticity. Strictly speaking, a "shade of black" is always a pure black itself, and a "tint of black" would be a neutral gray. In practice, many off-black colors possess a hue and a colorfulness (also called saturation).
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This entry incorporates text from “Shades of black” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.