• Question: Do we all see the same shade of colours?

    Asked by hannahhhhh to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 21 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by jafagolumpa.
    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Colours are defined by the wavelngth of visible light that is reflected by something so there won’t be people that see green as orange or anything as extreme as that. More subtle differences like the the transition between a green and blue or pink and red etc are definitely open to inturpretation by different people.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 23 Jun 2013:

      We all see a similar range of colours, because of the mix of different cone cells in the back of our eyes, but what we actually call colours them will differ from person to person.

      I know that my wife and I can look at the same light blue thing, and I’ll call it blue, and she’ll call it grey.

      Weird, huh?

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      No, we don’t. We also don’t describe what we see in the same way, so it is difficult to judge. But different people definitely have different abilities to see different shades of colour.

      There are online tests for this and people get different scores, I found this one fun if you want to try: http://www.xrite.com/online-color-test-challenge

Comments