RAL 000 50 00 — Steel grey
This shade sits exactly at the middle of the lightness scale: L* 50, halfway between black and white. Yet the surface reflects only about 18 per cent of the incident light.
| Colour code | RAL 000 50 00 |
| Name | Steel grey |
| Collection | RAL Design System plus |
| Colour group | Grijsas (000) |
| Lightness | L* 50 |
| Chroma | C*ab 00 |
| Lab | 49,2 · -1,1 · -0,7 |
| Hex (indicative) | #737676 |
| Light reflectance value (LRV) | 21.02— official RAL value |
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D3 kleurchipRAL D3 losse kleurchipsPart of RAL D3 losse kleurchips · Item RALD-D3-LOS
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About RAL 000 50 00
That gap is the best-known misconception in the trade, and it is not a measurement error. The lightness scale L* follows human perception, and perception is not linear: the eye is far more sensitive to differences in the dark range than in the light range. So a grey that *looks* half as light as white reflects nowhere near half as much light.
In practice that has a hard consequence. If you plan a room by lightness, you assume a mid grey wall puts you at halfway and you are mistaken: considerably less light comes back than expected, and the lighting has to make up for it. So always base daylight and lighting calculations on the light reflectance value, never on L*.
That is also why 000 50 00 functions as a photographic reference grey and not as "half white".
| English | Steel grey |