A colour with very little hue strength — greys, off-whites, beiges and similar low-saturation colours.
Colourwise classifies a colour as neutral when its HSV saturation falls below a documented threshold, regardless of hue angle.
'Neutral' doesn't mean 'no undertone' — most neutrals still lean warm or cool.
Greige, oatmeal and charcoal are all neutrals.
Neutrals are the most common base colour for walls, flooring and large furniture precisely because they pair with almost everything.
A true neutral has a* and b* of zero: no chroma, and therefore no hue. Almost nothing sold as a neutral meets that. Colourwise draws its line at 8% HSV saturation and uses HSV for a reason: HSL saturation inflates sharply near white, so an off-white with barely any colour can score a quarter of the scale in HSL and a few per cent in HSV. Print and photography use a stricter sense, a grey that stays grey under the reference light, which is what a grey card is made to be.
| Colour | HSV saturation | CIELAB chroma | Hue family assigned |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grey #808080 | 0.0% | 0.0 | neutral |
| Off-White #faf9f6 | 1.6% | 1.6 | neutral |
| Taupe Grey #8b8589 | 4.3% | 3.3 | neutral |
| Greige #b2a79d | 11.8% | 7.0 | orange |
| Charcoal #36454f | 31.6% | 8.6 | blue |
Greige (11.8%) and Charcoal (31.6%) are neutrals to any decorator, but both are above the 8% line, so the classifier gives them a hue family: orange and blue. That is deliberate. The family is the direction the neutral leans, and it is the thing to compare when two neutrals have to sit side by side.
How this was calculated: HSV saturation of each catalogue HEX value against the classifier's threshold of 8%; below it no hue family is assigned.
Several neutrals are specified for one interior: walls, carpet, worktop, tiles.
Each was chosen as 'a neutral' separately, and together they split into a pinkish group and a greenish group that fight. Sorting the samples by which way they lean before committing prevents a room that looks assembled from leftovers.
Text and borders in an interface use a pure grey on a tinted background.
Against a warm or cool surface a chroma-free grey takes on the opposite cast and looks dirty, which is one reason many design systems tint their grey scale towards the brand hue.