A comparison of perceived colors with standard web colors.

The perceived color data is taken from xkcd. The standard web color is taken from wikipedia.

For each named color two boxes are drawn, on the left the perceived color, on the right the standard web color. Below each box is the number given to the background-color style parameter. The colors are presented in descending order according to the number of people that could name the color (as in the original xkcd). The most popular 16 colors are all present, then all others are skipped, except for the original standard web colors.

Why? Some of my research involves software visualizations - in color, it is therefore practical to use colors which - on average - people can easily name and differentiate. This goal is not yet achieved as I have not yet used any criteria for color differentiation (for example, light blue and sky blue are both popular and at the same time too similar).

Note: The xkcd color perception experiments were done in a color-on-white-background setting. Using different backgrounds will likely invalidate this data.