NEW YORK – Gray is, in fact, a gray area. There is such a wide sliding scale between black and white that it’s hard to pinpoint the color.

You might guess there are 50 shades, thanks to the much-buzzed-about E L James book “Fifty Shades of Grey,” but there are hundreds of versions – maybe thousands.

“We have only touched the surface of gray,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, the research division of Pantone Inc., which creates color standards for the fashion, beauty and home industries. “In our guide, you’d see gray on ‘gray’ pages, but you’d see some degrees of gray in the green families, in blues and browns. Gray is often on the cusp of another color.”