The colour of death

A study by a market research company under contract to the Australian government claims to have definitively identified the world's ugliest colour.

The colour, officially blessed with the rather highfallutin monicker of "opaque couché" and identified as No. 448 in the Pantone colour-matching system (74, 65, 42 in RGB, or #4A412A in RGB hex), is a kind of drab greenish-brown, variously described as looking like death, filth, lung tar(!) or baby excrement. It also happens to closely match the colour of the Mona Lisa's dress.

The Australian government wanted to identify the world's most repulsive colour in order to mandate its use for cigarette packaging in Australia, which is already festooned with graphic images of rotten teeth, cancerous tongues, and non-viable newborn babies. Australia's cigarette packaging has had an enviable record in getting smokers to quit, and its approach has been imitated by several other countries, including Britain, France and Ireland (actually, Canada was the first jurisdiction to require such full-colour graphic warnings on cigarette packages, way back in 2000).

The US tobacco industry, on the other hand, has managed to block all attempts to require such lurid health warnings. Maybe they could live with opaque couché, though?