Is it green or blue? Baffling colour illusion tests users

Is it green or blue? Baffling colour illusion tests users on whether they can correctly identify five different shades (so how many can you spot?)

  • It does not mean you have a colour vision deficiency if you get the colours wrong
  • Instead, opticians claim your answer is only how your brain perceives the colour
  • Optical Express drafted the quiz, which tricked hundreds of people in a survey 

It may sound like a seemingly easy question, being asked to name whether the colour in front of you is blue or green.

But a tricky new quiz throws any confidence you had in solving the 50/50 option out of the window.

In the baffling new illusion, opticians have placed five strikingly similar shades of green and blue next to each other.

They say if you can’t spot the subtle difference, it does not mean you have a colour vision deficiency, which affects almost three million Britons.

Instead, opticians claim the difference is only how the brain perceives the colour. 

It may sound like a seemingly easy question, being asked to name whether the colour in front of you is blue or green. But a tricky new quiz throws any confidence you had in solving the 50/50 option out of the window

Take the test for yourself below

Optical Express drafted the quiz, which tricked hundreds of people in a survey, as part of National Eye Health Week.

One of the colours the 1,000 people quizzed struggled to spot included Tiffany Blue, trademarked by the jewellery retailer.

Around two fifths of respondents polled assumed the shade was blue – even those it is closer to green on the RGB spectrum (113, 208, 197).


  • Doctors insert a laser into teenager’s PENIS after he forced…


    World’s first human case of ‘rat disease’: Man, 56, is…


    Pregnant women should be told that the risk of placenta…


    Brotherly love! Toddler who became one of Britain’s youngest…

Share this article

The quiz of five colours was prompted by another illusion from Optical Express that asked patients to identify whether one square was green or blue.

Two thirds of people quizzed were adamant this shade was green, while the remaining third disagreed – stating it was blue.

However, when asked to name the same colour adjacent to two distinctly blue images, the rate that thought it was green jumped.

Opticians said the colour has the values 0, 122 and 116 on the RGB colour spectrum – meaning the shade is only slightly more green than blue.

Stephen Hannan, clinical services director at Optical Express, said: ‘Isn’t the brain an extraordinary thing?

‘Every single person is unique and as a result, our brains process information differently.

‘Depending on how you interpret colours, one person might see it one way, while the very next person who looks at it might see it differently.’

Mr Hannan explained light enters the eye, passes through the natural lens and hits the retina, which is the light sensitive tissue at the back of the eye.

The light is converted to an electrical signal which travels along the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the brain.

The brain makes its own unique interpretation of this electrical signal, meaning people often see different colours to others.

Mr Hannan added: ‘It is not surprising that many respondents changed their mind when seeing the colour in contrast to the two blue shades.

‘We perceive an object’s colour based on a comparison to its surrounding shades, not on the actual colour itself.’

SO, WHICH IS BLUE AND WHICH IS GREEN?

In the baffling new illusion, opticians have placed five strikingly similar shades of green and blue next to each other

COLOUR 1. This shade is blue. R23, G103, B150

COLOUR 2. This shade is green. R0, G122 and B116

COLOUR 3. This shade is blue. R118, G195, B230

COLOUR 4. This shade is green. R113, G208, B197

COLOUR 5. This shade is green. R35, G151, B128

Source: Read Full Article