Grey is the neutral between black and white, containing no hue, and its symbolism is correspondingly one of the in-between, the indeterminate and the muted. It is the colour of ash, of cloud, of stone and of twilight, and it carries senses of neutrality, sobriety, humility and, less kindly, of dullness, uncertainty and the nondescript, the grey area where things are neither clearly one thing nor the other.
In dress grey has signified modesty and renunciation, worn by some monastic and penitential orders and by Quakers and Puritans as a plain, unshowy colour rejecting vanity. It is also the colour of age, grey hair, and so of experience and the passage of time. Grey has little liturgical role, being read within the broader category of ash and penitence. In the modern era grey acquired strong associations with the industrial and the bureaucratic, the grey of concrete and of the anonymous suit. As a symbol it tends toward balance and reserve, occupying deliberately the middle ground its very neutrality defines.