Layman Observation: Finding The Brightest Colour On Earth

Which colour appears the brightest to you?

Need a little help? Here’s a B/W version on the same colour wheel

Yellow hue near the center turns out to be the closest to white, therefore the brightest; Exterior blue hue is the closest to black, therefore the darkest. Converting colours into black and white can be a quick solution to the mystery of the brightest colour. But it is not entirely accurate because of digital conversion preferences.

We all know that light is an energy wave composed of spectral colours. When light hits an object, certain frequencies are reflected while others are absorbed, determined by the natural frequencies of vibration of the object. The reflected light is what forms our cognition of colour of the object, i.e. an orange car reflects orange in the visible spectrum.

How bright a color appears to a human eye depends on multiple factors:

The Source – Object

• Gradation of target colour (Is it a lighter green closer to white or a darker green closer to black?)
• Saturation of target colour (Highlighters’ neon colours are perceptibly brighter with higher degree of saturation)
• Surrounding colour contrasts (Our brain can adjust our vision by comparing colour to colour)

The Medium – Light

• Light intensity (Amount of light present to reflect colour properties on an object, think day versus night)
• Wavelength range target colour falls in (Is it a wide spanning colour in the visible spectrum or a narrow one? Basically the wider the brighter)
• Luminance (The sensation of light perceived by person. Every colour has a different natural luminance in the same brightness, with yellow being the best-in-class for appearing to be lighter)

The Receiver – Retina

• Human eye sensitivity (How do the red, green, blue cone cells react to the circumstances)

Taking all factors into account, it is very difficult to determine a single colour as the brightest. Each person’s eyes are unique, with ranging alignments and quantities of photo-sensitive cells, thus may perceive colours in a different sense. One’s green may literally be another one’s blue, just that there’s no surefire way to confirm what we see as green is identical in another person’s vision. Theoretically speaking, the colour white being the colour that reflects all of the visible spectrum should be crowned as the brightest. Yet we still don’t know which non-white colour is the brightest (just like which non-black colour is the darkest). Here’s a take from Quora’s Most Viewed Writer in Optics, Tim Kaye:

For (photopic) color vision, the human eye is most sensitive to the wavelength 555 nm, which most people perceive as yellow-green. It is actually closer to yellow in terms of wavelength, but perceptually looks closer to green. For scotopic (night) vision the peak wavelength is 507 nm, except we see that in black and white.

By another definition pure yellow is the brightest, in that it most closely resembles white. Blue is perceived as closest to black. This illustrates how there can be several definitions of perceived brightness. The latter is sometimes said to be related to “saturation discrimination.”

No matter white, yellow, or yellow-green, it is fascinating how a seemingly straightforward question can lead to various answers. We have been enjoying colour vision since forever, maybe it’s time to for everyone to learn more about the windows to the soul.

Ideas? Corrections? Write it down below!

Image credit: Kantemir Kertiev via Unsplash, freshome, Encyclopedia Britannica

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