Slate Screen
Fill your whole display with slate in one click. Nothing to install, nothing uploaded.
Slate wallpaper
What a slate screen is for
Slate is a blue-tinted mid grey. Like neutral grey it drives all three subpixels at moderate levels, so it reveals clouding and tint, but the slight blue lift makes warm color casts easier to notice.
A rock that splits into sheets
Slate is a metamorphic rock formed when shale is compressed, and its defining property is that it cleaves into thin flat sheets along a plane created by that pressure. That is why it became the standard roofing material wherever it was quarried, and why school writing slates existed. Its colour comes mostly from the fine-grained clay minerals and carbon it contains, giving the muted blue-grey the name now describes.
A neutral with a temperature
Slate is a grey with a blue lean: all three channels at moderate output with blue slightly ahead. That small imbalance is what separates it from plain grey and it matters more than the size of the difference suggests, because the eye is very good at detecting a cast in something it expects to be neutral. Cool greys like this read as crisp and modern, where a warm grey reads as softer, and interfaces choose between them deliberately.
Mid-tones and contrast
Slate sits close to the middle of the brightness range, which is the least convenient place for text. Neither black nor white text has a comfortable margin against a true mid-tone, and this is where contrast requirements are most often failed by designs that look fine to the designer. If you are using slate as a background for anything that must be read, check the ratio rather than trusting your eye, and expect to push the text further toward one extreme than feels necessary.
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.
Slate color values
The exact values for this shade, if you need to match it somewhere else.
| Hex | #708090 |
|---|---|
| RGB | 112, 128, 144 |
| HSL | 210°, 13%, 50% |
| CMYK | 22%, 11%, 0%, 44% |
| Contrast on white | 4.05:1 |
| Contrast on black | 5.18:1 |
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. Slate reaches that bar on black.
Colors close to slate
Measured as perceived difference, not by name, so these are the shades that genuinely sit nearest slate 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 slate 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 slate screen?
This page uses #708090. The same value is shown in RGB, HSL and CMYK further down, so you can match this exact shade somewhere else.
Does a slate 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 slate 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.