Colour illusions: the colours you see that aren’t really there.
The dress that split the internet, strawberries with no red in them, two greys that look different, colours that leak out of their lines, ghosts that appear after you stare, and a black and white top that spins into colour. All drawn by us, and every fact linked to its source.
The short version
Your visual system tries to work out the colour of the light and ‘subtract’ it. This is called colour constancy, and it usually works well. Michael Bach
Our eyes are not light meters: they take context into account. Michael Bach
His law of simultaneous contrast: colours placed side by side affect each other, each pushing its own complementary colour onto its neighbour. Britannica
Most colour illusions are your brain doing its job too well: it guesses the light, compares neighbours and fills in gaps. Where sources tell the story differently, we show each version side by side.
Explore
Try the games
A 12-question quiz and a myth-or-fact challenge, plus the demos on every page: press the buttons to see the trick.
More from the family: shapes that fool you live at size.illusions.im, and figures that can’t exist at impossible-objects.illusions.im.