Grey Screen
Fill your whole display with grey in one click. Nothing to install, nothing uploaded.
Grey wallpaper
What a grey screen is for
Mid grey is the single most useful test field. It drives every subpixel equally at half power, so any tint, cloudiness, backlight bleed or uneven brightness stands out immediately in a way a black or white field can hide.
The best field for judging a panel
Grey drives all three subpixels equally, and a mid grey drives them at partial output rather than fully on or fully off. That combination is what makes it the most revealing test field there is. Panels are least uniform in the middle of their range, so faults that black hides and white washes out become obvious in grey: banding as brightness steps between levels, blotchy patches known as mura, and the pale corner clouding of an uneven backlight. Professional calibration works in greys for exactly this reason.
Neutral grey in photography
The 18 per cent grey card is a standard reference because camera meters assume the scene they are pointed at averages to roughly that reflectance. Photographing a known neutral grey gives a reference point for setting white balance afterwards, since any colour cast in the image must have come from the light or the camera rather than the subject. A screen showing a flat grey is a rough stand-in when no card is to hand, though a screen emits light rather than reflecting it, so it is a starting point rather than a substitute.
Grey, contrast and reading
Pure black text on pure white is the highest contrast a screen can produce, and it is not automatically the most comfortable: the sharp edge between the two can produce a haloing effect that some readers find harsh, which is why many interfaces set body text in a very dark grey rather than true black. The accessibility floor still applies. Grey on white loses contrast fast as it lightens, and mid grey text on a white background frequently fails the 4.5 to 1 ratio that guidelines require for body copy.
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.
Grey color values
The exact values for this shade, if you need to match it somewhere else.
| Hex | #808080 |
|---|---|
| RGB | 128, 128, 128 |
| HSL | 0°, 0%, 50% |
| CMYK | 0%, 0%, 0%, 50% |
| Contrast on white | 3.95:1 |
| Contrast on black | 5.32:1 |
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. Grey reaches that bar on black.
Colors close to grey
Measured as perceived difference, not by name, so these are the shades that genuinely sit nearest grey 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 grey 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 grey screen?
This page uses #808080. The same value is shown in RGB, HSL and CMYK further down, so you can match this exact shade somewhere else.
Does a grey 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 grey 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.