Picking paint or fabric colors can be a real test of one's patience. Especially when you are trying to come to a joint decision with another person. When mulling over wall color options with my mother recently I started to feel like we were actually seeing our own subjective and unique versions of each color swatch; as if the color itself was less an objective reality and more a subjective projection. Well, it turns out color actually is subjective.
I discovered this at a children's museum (ScienceWorks) in Australia last month (yeah, that's sort of embarrassing I guess), I learned that color is a "sensation" that is created by your brain and that not everyone's color perception is the same. We all have difference color receptors (called cones), which send messages to the brain when stimulated by different wavelengths of light. The brain then creates the "sensation" of color you see.
So I started to think about color blindness, a condition that would certainly change your experience of color! Ever wondered if you have mild or moderate color blindness? Well, here's a super fun self-test called the RGB anomaloscope color blindness test, which can be found on the website colblindor, created by Daniel Fluck of Zurich. The test is not a substitute for a real anomaloscope (because of the three color limitation of computer displays), so if you suspect you have issues it is best to see an ophthalmologist. But this online test does help predict the severity and type of red-green color blindness.
(Image: Murobond found via Melancholy Smile)
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I'm moderate.
weird... have never seen a test like that before. kind of scary! but im not colorblind. but itsnt it more common in males?
i think it's so strange when people are colorblind. must be so weird
I am a protanope - I am "red-blind" which presents itself as a confusion of some dark reds/black/brown/dark grey and some lime green/yellow, purple/blue. All in all, there is little to no impact on my daily life: I can still see color, I just don't see the same colors that "normal" people do. It does effect my design choices as I tend to stick to more cool colors or colors that I can actually see.
Colorblindness is an X chromosome linked trait that is also recessive. Males only have one X chromosome while women have 2. If a male has genes for colorblindess, it will be effective whereas women will have the genes on the other X chromosome to mask the colorblindness. My father is colorblind and that means I have one copy of that gene. My future sons will have a 50% chance of being colorblind.
Both of my sister's sons are not colorblind but we sure did quiz them a lot when they first started learning their colors!
I don't even leave the "not colourblind" section -
I once worked for a publisher who made math textbooks. We couldn't use green for an accent color in the exercises because so many mathematicians are colorblind. I've observed that people who are colorblind are often also left-handed, sometimes nearsighted, and have strong analytical skills. My husband fits all of these. We once bought a light green sofa and after living with it for a while, I found out my husband thought it was a gray sofa. I love light green so now I check each time I use it to make sure it's a variation he can see! He also has trouble distinguishing between very dark colors, which all look black to him.
@Jenjo That's such an interesting observation - to think that there might be a correlation between being colorblind, left-handed, nearsighted, and having analytical skills! I study Neurobiology (I wonder if I can get a research grant for this??) and was having a conversation with a philosophy major the other day about the "perception of color." It really was quite hilarious, and the english majors and public relations kids were confused as hell!
It's soo true that even if you aren't considered "color blind" you still have a unique way of percepting colours. Luckily me and my fiance see colours very similarly, so there's a long standing argument over what the colour of my old car was. Me and my fiance insist that it was silver while two of my sisters will insist that it was brown. I just took that test though and I am thoroughly NOT color blind, so score one point for me!