If you’ve ever found yourself disagreeing with a friend about whether something is blue or green, you’re in good company. Remember the whole debate about “the dress,” and then came the sneakers? Now it seems that it’s all down to how we see the colour blue.
If you want to settle the score, there’s now a test called “Is my blue your blue?” which reveals how different — or similar — your colour perceptions are compared to everyone else.
How it works
The test was created by neuroscientist and AI researcher Dr. Mineault after a little debate with his wife, Dr. Marissé Masis-Solano, who’s an ophthalmologist. The debate was over a blanket in their home – he thought it was unambiguously green and she thought it was unambiguously blue.
Basically, the website ismy.blue will fill the screen with one colour, and it’ll ask you if it’s green or blue (to your eyes). Then the colours will gradually change and even when the colour is in between blue and green, like turquoise, it’ll still ask you to choose between blue or green.
Patrick explains that colours are often represented in HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) colour space. Hue 120 is green, and hue 240 is blue. The test focuses on blue-green hues between 150 and 210. At the end of the test, your result is based on other people who took the test so that they can compare it to the general population.
According to his early experiments, most people’s responses cluster around 175, which coincidentally is the same as the HTML colour turquoise. He found that interesting, since the nominal boundary between blue and green is at 180, the HTML colour cyan. So, most people consider cyan as blue.
Ever since the debate about the colour of the dress or sneaker, people have been wondering if we all see the same colours. Even philosophers and scientists have asked themselves the same question for thousands of years. We’re not all built the same, so our perceptions are, justifiably, different from one person to another.
Colour can be subjective
Color is generally “tricky to measure,” according to Patrick. This is true especially based on where you see the colour. Vision scientists use specially-calibrated equipment, while graphic designers use physical colour cards (like Pantone).
Of course, what colour you see depends on what you see it on – because phones, laptops or television can be calibrated differently depending on the model, how old the device is, display settings, night node, ambient light sources, and time of day. Your perception may even vary depending on which colour you see first.
“Getting outlier results doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your vision,” Patrick explained. “It might mean you have an idiosyncratic way of naming colours, or that your monitor and lighting is unusual.”
So even if you see blue, someone else will always see it as green. It’s probably how they were conditioned. After all, our very own behavioral psychology is conditioned by colour.
