# Can you explain the color black to me? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 16, 2013, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705 "2013-07-16T22:31:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705/41 "2013-07-19T04:39:09Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > I also thought that brown was dark orange. Brown is a “contrast color”. You can only see a true brown if there are other contrasting (and lighter) colors around it. You cannot experience brown filling the whole visual field. The nearest you can get is something that looks to be a dark orange or dark yellow. However, something with a spectral reflectance that amounts to dark yellow or dark orange (or, even sometimes, not so very dark) will look brown when surrounded by other contrasting colors, and, in real-world circumstances (including on a computer monitor), it almost always _will_ be so surrounded. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705/42 "2013-07-19T17:47:34Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > If black is what you get when no light is reflected, how come I can still see my pants? 🙂 > [@Isilder](#): > > One aspect of that has been left out. > > Take a black jacket. Shine a strong WHITE light (eg an LED torch) on it. Is it black ,grey or white ? no its likely purple , red or blue. But it could perhaps be white. Yep a black thing can be white ! (diamond dust appears black.). Your black jacket is not changing colour because of the light, the true colour is being REVEALED.. by ramping the brightness up with the really strong lamp. I was going to mention the fact that, while my wardrobe is almost entirely black, aside from my white socks, my dryer lint is consistently a shade of purple. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Orange is light brown, and pink is light red. These color pairs have analogous relationships to the relationship between light blue and dark blue, but English speakers split the first two pairs as representing fundamental differences in color but not the last. All forms of blue are considered blue, but a pink shirt cannot generally be described as a “red shirt”, and a grocery store that said that it sold high quality brown-colored citrus fruit might not get many customers. Well, except the store wouldn’t do that - the fruit was named “orange” and loaned its name to the color. IIRC from a previous discussion here, prior to the introduction of the orange _fruit_ to English-speaking countries, the _color_ now called orange was described as a shade of red or yellow. ---
**Author:** ![eltro102](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@eltro102](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eltro102)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705/43 "2013-07-19T23:23:37Z")
you’re confusing luminosity with hue - grey isn’t a hue of white/black, its caused by the luminosity of the thing being less/more ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705/44 "2013-07-20T11:32:21Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Yeah, how much more black could a surface be?The answer is none. None more black. At least we don’t face such fundamental restrictions when it comes to volume. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2013, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705/45 "2013-07-21T12:36:32Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Brown is a “contrast color”. You can only see a true brown if there are other contrasting (and lighter) colors around it. You cannot experience brown filling the whole visual field. The nearest you can get is something that looks to be a dark orange or dark yellow. However, something with a spectral reflectance that amounts to dark yellow or dark orange (or, even sometimes, not so very dark) will look brown when surrounded by other contrasting colors, and, in real-world circumstances (including on a computer monitor), it almost always _will_ be so surrounded. I really would like to see a citation for this. And, no, I can’t just test it by letting something brown fill my vision, due to color persistence. (Don’t know if that’s the official term. I mean that something stays the color you think it is, even under other light conditions.) ---
**Author:** ![JWT\_Kottekoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@JWT\_Kottekoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JWT_Kottekoe)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2013, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705/46 "2013-07-21T15:28:44Z")
Here is a citation from [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown#Optics) > [@](#): > > Brown exists as a color perception only in the presence of a brighter color contrast.[14] Yellow, orange, red, or rose objects are still perceived as such if the general illumination level is low, despite reflecting the same amount of red or orange light as a brown object would in normal lighting conditions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-explain-the-color-black-to-me/663705.md?page=2)