3 Lies about Color (and what you can do about it)

Can’t get enough color myths? Me either!

Instead of baking sourdough bread, I’m sampling my color talk at all the TUGs. Trust me, it’s well fermented and ready for showtime. Want a color talk for your TUG? Count me in.

Besides the intuitiveness of red-yellow-green or that love is always red, here are some other lies we’ve been told!

You see what I see*

The asterisk here recognizes some people are colorblind or have other identified reasons for seeing something different. Some of us learn about colorblindness and this variation the hard way. For me, it was after I printed out a beautifully color-coded FAQ sheet using brand colors for a marketing intern that was colorblind. Our brand colors at the time? Blue, green, and orange. Guess which 2 I picked for comparison’s sake….I trust you are smarter than me.

Known differences aside, the story that gets sold is perception is otherwise universal. Except, the internet proves this notion wrong time and time again.

Which image best matches what you see?

This dress set off a firestorm of research. Rarely do these experiments happen in the wild. It highlighted just how varied our perceptions are and also the stickiness of those perceptions. One suggested part of the difference goes to how the brain interprets lighting in the image. Another leans towards the checkerboard image.

This doesn’t just happen with 3-dimensional objects or lighting effects. It also happens with 2-dimensional forms.

Both inner rectangles are the same color, though it’s hard to believe it.

This same effect plays out in charts.

Some of these have the same color value. Can you guess which ones?

Here’s the same data (axes and labels intentionally hidden) where size and color from the treemap are preserved for easier comparison between the two charts. Depending on your task and intentions, a scatterplot provides greater efficiency and accuracy.

How to address this color lie: try different charts, particularly if the data in color is important.

Complementary colors play nicely

Or, in other headlines, there’s a reason these colors end up in comic books…

Complementary colors complete each other, creating black/brown on conventional mediums and white with lighting effects. This effect helps create chromostereopsis, particularly with red and blue.

Chromostereopsis is an awesome effect when you want things to jiggle or feel like they’re slightly popped off the page (think comic books or 3D movies). It’s a far less fun effect when you’re trying to understand your data. People who wear glasses to correct nearsightedness will be more affected by this than others.

The wildest part of all? Chromostereopsis can even be recreated on grey.

If you’re working with red and blue as colors, be mindful of where they land. Test drive them if chromostereosis doesn’t affect you as much.

How to address this color lie: avoid overlapping complementary colors.

We notice bright colors

Want someone to see something? Make it bright! This myth gets sold a lot these days, especially since attention is waning.

The challenge – as these myths have shown – is that what we think is true often isn’t the whole truth.

Our eyes are attuned to those “out of place” items. Both the white and black shapes stand out in the image above.

Here, we notice all kinds of things are out of place.

Despite being bright, the data here can still be seen. Part of this relies on pushing the gridlines back. Here’s what happens if we don’t.

With too much black, the green becomes blinding. This also comes into play with Web Content Accessibility Guidance.

We want the right amount of contrast between our elements. Too much and we invoke pain and make it hard to see (as with all things, there are caveats here). Too little and yes, it’s also hard to see. For more fun, toss in computer screen variances and it’s very hard to anticipate what others see. Test your colors for accessibility and make sure elements like gridlines are pushed back.

How to address this color lie: test differences and be aware of relational contrast.

Now that your eyes are exhausted, have some visual tricks set to music.