Gray or grey is a color seen commonly in nature. It is created by mixing white and black in different proportions. Depending on the amount of light, the human eye can interpret the same object as either gray or some other color.

Two colors are called complementary colors if they produce gray when combined. The psychological primary colors are:

Black and White

Blue and Yellow

Red and Green

Other sets of complementary colors include

Orange and Sea blue

Lime and Purple

And of course, gray is its own complement. In an afterimage, which can be seen after seeing the picture for about 30 seconds, the colors will switch to their complements.

Usage, symbolism and colloquial expressions

• 'Gray life', meaning mere existence without much sense or goal.
• A 'grey person' is someone who goes unnoticed, a wallflower.
• Gray was used as the color of the uniforms of Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War, as opposed to the blue uniforms of Union soldiers.
• In a moral sense gray is either used
  • pejoratively to describe situations that have no clear moral value, or
  • positively to balance an all-black or all-white view (i.e. shades of gray = magnitudes of good/bad)
• Gray is associated with autumn, bad weather, and sadness.
• The color gray has been used to describe the industrialist, as opposed to green to describe the environmentalist.
• The hair becomes gray as one ages, and hence gray is associated with senior citizens, as inspired the name of the Gray Panthers.
• The substance that composes the brain is referred to as 'gray matter', and for that reason the color is associated with things intellectual.

Color coordinates

• RGB:
  • R: 128
  • G: 128
  • B: 128

All the gray values in grayscale are solutions of the inequality:

hex triplet: #808080

(see: hex triplet on how to convert the grayscale from RGB into hex triplets)

• CMYK:
  • C: 0
  • M: 0
  • Y: 0
  • K: 128

All the gray values in grayscale are solutions of the inequality:

when C = M = Y = 0.

In theory it is also possible to achieve a grayscale with perfect inks when:

C = M = Y and K = 0

• HSV:
  • H: 0
  • S: 0
  • V: 50

All the grey values in greyscale are solutions of the inequality:

when H = S = 0 .

See also

• List of colors