I don’t want this shirt for my birthday.
What do the colors pink, gray, and beige have in common?
For one thing, they’re all annoying. I mean, come on…this isn’t rocket science.
But why are they annoying? Why is lilac (RGB = [220, 208, 255]) so insipid? Why does jasmine (RGB = [248, 222, 126]) make one vaguely nauseated? Why is Crayola fuchsia (RGB = [193, 84, 193]) worse than a bout of the common cold? (Use this applet to investigate these combinations.)
My thesis is this: that these colors are so annoying because they’re extra spectral colors. And on some primal, instinctual level, humans don’t like extra spectral colors very much.
In a previous post, I talked about how humans have 3 kinds of cones in their retinas. Roughly speaking, these cones react most strongly with light in the red, green, and blue parts of the visible spectrum. Now, as I mentioned, “color” is a word we give to the sensations that we perceive. Light that has a wavelength of 570 nm, for example, stimulates “red” and “green” cones about equally, and we “see” yellow. That’s why we say that R+G=Y. That’s why we also say that 570 nm light is “yellow” light.
Extra spectral colors are colors that don’t correspond to any one single wavelength of light. They are “real” colors, in the sense that retinal cones get stimulated and our brains perceive something. However, extra spectral colors don’t appear in any rainbow. To make an extra spectral color, more than one wavelength of light must hit our retinas. Our brains then take this data and “create” the color we perceive.
In terms of the RGB color code, extra spectral colors are those in which both R and B (corresponding to the cones at either end of the visible spectrum) are non-zero. And I don’t know about you, but I have a very heavy preference against extra spectral colors.
Now, admittedly, white (RGB = [255,255,255]) is about as extra spectral as you can get. Does white annoy me? Not really; but as a color, it’s also pretty dull. Does anyone paint their bedroom pure white on purpose? Does anyone really want an entirely white car?
But the other extra spectral colors I mentioned earlier are a who’s who of mediocrity. Does anyone older than 16 actually like pink? Has anyone in the history of the world every uttered the sentence, “Gray is my favorite color”? And beige—ugh. Just, ugh.
Standard pink has an RGB code of [255, 192, 203]. Surprisingly, there are combinations that are much, much worse. Hot pink [255, 105, 180] disturbs me. Champagne pink [241, 221, 207] bothers me. Congo pink [248, 131, 121] doesn’t actually make your eyes bleed, but I had to check a mirror to verify this for myself.
Beiges are less offensive, but that’s like saying cauliflower tastes better than broccoli. Of particular note are “mode beige” [150, 113, 23] which used to be called “drab” but was re-branded in Orwellian fashion, and feldgrau [77, 93, 83] which was used in World War II by the German army, in an apparent attempt to win the war by losing the fashion battle.
This is speculation, but I’ve often wondered if these colors bother me because they are stimulating all three kinds of cones in my retina. Maybe in some deep part of the reptilian complex portion of my brain, I know (on an intuitive level) that these colors don’t correspond to any particular wavelength. These colors don’t appear in the rainbow. You can’t make a laser pointer with one of these colors. You can’t have a magenta, or a beige, or a gray photon. And somehow, my aesthetic sense knows this. So when I see the color “dust storm” [229, 204, 201] my limbic system tells me to wince, and I’m saved from even having to know why.
Anyway, I’d be interested in seeing which color(s) bother you the most. I’m going to guess the color(s) are extra spectral.
[Note: my book Why Is There Anything? is now available for download on the Kindle!]
Many Worlds Theory 
Languid Lavender (84, 79, 87), Spanish Bistre (50, 46, 20), and Old Moss Green (53, 49, 20) all seem to cause me a certain degree of biliousness….
That’s awesome, I’m going to try it out right now. There’s been a few times I visit a site and think wow I love that color! But coduln’t find it when looking at the css.
You’re so right about Crayola fuchsia. I thought nobody else understood me…
Where there is a will, there is a way
Oakley Half Jacket Sunglasse http://www.ebuyaccessories.com
“Has anyone in the history of the world every uttered the sentence, “Gray is my favorite color”?”
Yes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuHVZ_-b868
😛
Hello, thank you very much for your post, I have been going mad for weeks in my (sparse) spare time trying to understand some facts about colors, and I think both this post and the one about the RGB colors almost calmed me down… but not yet. I am of course no expert, just interested in physics, and I have questions that I have asked in many forms to different sources, and could not find the answer, please if you could help me, I see from your entries that you must know the answers for them
1- I was looking for the way to combine two waves with different wavelenghts to create a new wave with a predominating wavelenght (as a first fourier element) but i couldn´t. I wanted to add, for example, red + green, and get yellow. Mathematically. As a I saw, yellow has got a wavelenght in the optical range, around 575 nm. Is this possible at all? Or is it just a statistical mess that occur in our eyecones?
2- I have read in your post about extra-spectral colors. I was surprised, and of course helped me, because I was wondering how could we see white color, out of combining RGB, if white is not in the visible range. But how is it “harmonic” that two RGB secondary colors ARE in the range (yellow and cyan) but the other one isn´t (magenta)? How does this build-up of the cones work if not by adding-up waves?
Please please please help me somebody… my two small kids need their mum and my attention is not where it shouldbe….;).
Thanks in advance
I think part of the problem is our language. We really shouldn’t say that R+G=Y, we should say that the average of R and G is Y. That is, if you take the wavelength of red light (which predominantly stimulates a R cone) and the wavelength of G that mostly stimulates a G cone, add the two wavelengths and divide by two, you’d get a wavelength which stimulates the R and G cones about equally, which our brain then “interprets” as being yellow. Hope that helps.
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So how are you feeling about the recent trend towards grey and pink room decor?
I am surprised that there is such a thing as a “trend” in room decor
I’ve always vacillated between (shades) of blue and grey as my favourite colour. Somewhere in your analysis is the reason – and one day I’ll find it. Thanks for a great – informative – read
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