# Weird sensation and the color orange **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 4, 2019, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979 "2019-11-04T05:33:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2019, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/1 "2019-11-04T05:33:50Z")
Years ago I worked at an office supply store. They had those tri fold, I guess really only two fold poster boards that you would see kids use for science projects. There was one in the store that was a bright neon orange. If I put my head inside and sort of closed it around me I would see the bright orange all around my line of sight and peripheral vision. The damndest thing about it though was when I did it made feel almost high or something I almost felt a sense of being temporarily “stupefied” or something. It only lasted as long as I stared into the orange color and stopped immediately if I pulled my head out. What the hell was happening? ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2019, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/2 "2019-11-04T05:52:31Z")
Now, this office supply store you worked at; did they also carry model glue? That might explain why you were sticking your head inside things in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2019, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/3 "2019-11-04T12:44:28Z")
I sometimes get the same sort of thing from bright neon yellow items. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2019, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/4 "2019-11-04T14:46:02Z")
[You are not the first person to notice this effect.](https://www.cobosocial.com/dossiers/james-turrell-immersive-light/) ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2019, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/5 "2019-11-04T15:10:26Z")
The perception of orange and brown which have fair amounts of red, green, and blue are highly affected by contrast with other colors. There is some kind of effect on the eyes when there is a lack of that contrasting color and I can see your brain going a little haywire trying to work out the paradoxically conflicting information when all you can see is orange around you. I don’t remember where I heard about this effect, maybe here on the Dope, but I also didn’t have the impression that it would apply to something like bright neon orange, it seemed like something that applied to darker earth tones, or like a pumpkin color compared to an orange. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/6 "2019-11-05T02:20:58Z")
Was this an effect that only worked with the color orange? I’ve had moments of disorientation when confronted with unbroken visual fields of any single color, like being in an IMAX dome theater, where there is no ‘thing’ for the eye to catch on, so no clue for the brain how to converge the eyes. You lose a key data point for orienting yourself in space: is the screen a foot from my face or a mile away? Similarly, a uniform pattern at the right distance can cause problems with depth perception - the wallpaper in my parent’s bathroom would jump toward and away from you if you were sitting on the toilet sort of focused on the middle distance, like those magic eye things from the 90’s. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2019, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weird-sensation-and-the-color-orange/842979/7 "2019-11-05T02:50:03Z")
> [@brossa](#): > > Was this an effect that only worked with the color orange? > > I’ve had moments of disorientation when confronted with unbroken visual fields of any single color, like being in an IMAX dome theater, where there is no ‘thing’ for the eye to catch on, so no clue for the brain how to converge the eyes. You lose a key data point for orienting yourself in space: is the screen a foot from my face or a mile away? > > Similarly, a uniform pattern at the right distance can cause problems with depth perception - the wallpaper in my parent’s bathroom would jump toward and away from you if you were sitting on the toilet sort of focused on the middle distance, like those magic eye things from the 90’s. Not sure if other colors caused it but I also had the experience of a sort of 3D depth perception thing with the wallpaper in the bathroom. The bright orange sensation was markedly different though because I felt almost like my thought process was “off” a little bit, not just my perception of visual stimuli.