Charcoal Screen
Fill your whole display with charcoal in one click. Nothing to install, nothing uploaded.
Charcoal wallpaper
What a charcoal screen is for
Charcoal is a dark blue-grey, the tone most dark interfaces actually use rather than pure black. It is easier on the eyes than black in a lit room because it reduces the harsh edge between screen and surroundings.
Why interfaces use this instead of black
A great many dark interfaces set their background at a very dark grey rather than pure black, and it is a considered choice. Pure white text on pure black produces halation, an apparent blooming of the letters that makes body text harder to read for extended periods and is noticeably worse for readers with astigmatism. Backing the background off to charcoal and the text off from pure white reduces the effect while keeping contrast comfortably above accessibility thresholds. It also gives designers room for elevation, since a card can sit lighter than the background rather than needing a border.
The OLED trade-off
The argument the other way is power. On OLED and AMOLED panels a pure black pixel is switched off and consumes essentially nothing, while charcoal still lights all three subpixels slightly across the entire screen. A charcoal interface therefore costs real battery life on a phone where a black one costs almost none. Charcoal also loses the perfect black that OLED is prized for, so for watching video in a dark room black is the better background, while for reading text charcoal is usually the more comfortable one.
As a test field
A near-black field is more revealing than pure black for some faults. Pure black switches an OLED off entirely and tells you nothing about its low-end behaviour, whereas charcoal is driving every pixel at a very low level, which is precisely where banding and blotchy unevenness appear. On an LCD, charcoal in a dark room shows whether the panel can render a dark tone cleanly or whether the backlight lifts it toward grey. Stuck pixels remain easiest to find on pure black.
Click the panel above to go fullscreen and press Esc to come back. The color is drawn by your browser, so nothing is installed and nothing is uploaded.
Charcoal color values
The exact values for this shade, if you need to match it somewhere else.
| Hex | #36454F |
|---|---|
| RGB | 54, 69, 79 |
| HSL | 204°, 19%, 26% |
| CMYK | 32%, 13%, 0%, 69% |
| Contrast on white | 9.9:1 |
| Contrast on black | 2.12:1 |
Contrast ratios follow the WCAG formula. Anything at or above 4.5:1 is readable as body text against that background, and 3:1 is the floor for large headings. Charcoal reaches that bar on white.
Colors close to charcoal
Measured as perceived difference, not by name, so these are the shades that genuinely sit nearest charcoal to the eye.
Questions
Does this work on a phone?
Yes. On mobile the page fills the screen when you tap the panel. Some browsers keep a thin status bar visible, which is a browser limit rather than something the page controls.
Will a charcoal screen fix a stuck pixel?
Sometimes. A stuck pixel is lit in one color and can occasionally be freed by cycling colors rapidly for a few minutes. A dead pixel receives no power at all and cannot be recovered in software.
What is the hex code for this charcoal screen?
This page uses #36454F. The same value is shown in RGB, HSL and CMYK further down, so you can match this exact shade somewhere else.
Does a charcoal screen save battery?
Not meaningfully. Only black saves power, and only on OLED and AMOLED panels where an unlit pixel is genuinely off. Any lit color, including a dark one, draws power.
Can I download this charcoal as a wallpaper?
Yes. There is a ready-made 1920 by 1080 PNG on this page, and the panel above will generate the same color at your own screen size, at 1440p or 4K, or at phone dimensions. No watermark and no sign-up.
Is it free?
Yes, and there is no sign-up. The page draws a color; that is the whole tool.