Anyone who’s ever stared in desperation at a paint colour chart will know that telling shades apart is not always the easiest task.
Due to our biological differences, some people seem to have no trouble separating the subtlest of tones, while others find it tricky to find a matching pair of socks.
If you’ve ever wondered where you fall on this colour spectrum, a new test will reveal how you stack up against your peers.
The deceptively difficult test tasks you with arranging colours according to their shades.
So, what’s your colour IQ? Take the test at this link to find out.
To see where you fall on the spectrum of colour IQ, this test can determine how your colour perception compares to other people your ageÂ
The test, created by X-rite Pantone, is a simplified version of something called the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue Test which was developed in the 1940s by a scientist called Dean Farnsworth.
The real test is a physical box containing 100 small chips, each with a different colour on the top.
Just like the online version, participants are asked to arrange the pieces into hue order and are scored by how many chips are placed incorrectly and how far off those errors are.
This test works by assessing your ability to spot small differences between similar colours.
To take the test, click and drag the colour tiles so that they are arranged in hue order, making a smooth gradient from the two fixed colours at either end.
Once you have completed all four tests click ‘Score My Test’ to get your results.
Once you have completed the test, enter your age and gender to see how you compare to other people in your demographic groupÂ
The test will also ask for your age and gender so you can see where you fit in against the best and worst scores for your demographic.
You receive ‘points’ for your errors so the lower your score the better, with zero being a perfect rating.
However, don’t be surprised if you end up with a lower score than you might have expected – especially if your a man.
One in 255 women have some form of colour deficiency but this is as high as one in 12 in men.
We are able to perceive colour because of specialised cells in our eyes called cones which are either specialised to detect long or medium wavelength light.
This test is based on the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue Test (pictured) which was developed in the 1940s by a scientist called Dean Farnsworth to assess people’s ability to perceive colour differenceÂ
In people with a colour impairment or colour blindness, some types of cones are missing or inactive.
That means there will be regions of the visible light spectrum that your eyes are unable to register, making it harder to perceive the difference between similar shades.
Our colour perception also gets worse as we get older because of changes that occur in the eyes’ lenses.
Past the age of 40, the lens begins to yellow, which reduces the amount of light that can reach the retina and shifts our perception of colours.
This, alongside the natural ageing of the cone cells, means that older people may find the test more difficult.
One in 255 women and one in 12 men have some form of visual impairment. This may mean that while the letter in the image on the left is clear, the one on the right is much harder to spot
However, if you are scoring lower on the test than you expected it might not necessarily be because of any visual deficiency.
Research has shown that people’s perception of colour can also be affected by factors in their environment.
Scientists from the University of Nevada found that the distribution of perceived colours can be affected by something as subtle as the change of the seasons.
Their study revealed that the colour which people identified as yellow changed depending on the time of year even though the activation in their rod cells remained the same.
In their paper, published in Network, the researchers wrote: ‘Seasonal climate changes alter both the average color in scenes and how the colors are distributed around the average.’
Your test results may also be influenced by the lighting conditions around you. Incandescent lights (left) contain a very different spectrum of light to daylight (right) which will determine which wavelengths reach your eyes
Likewise, factors such as lighting and which colours you can see in the background have a profound effect on what colours you see.
In a blog post, the test’s creators write: ‘As strange as it sounds, objects themselves don’t have color. They have properties that determine which wavelengths of light are absorbed, and which are reflected.’
This means that the tone of the light hitting the object changes the wavelength of light which hits our eyes.
That is why clothes you buy at the shops under fluorescent lighting often look quite different once you take them out into the sunlight.
Since our brains are faced with more visual information than we can handle they have also ‘learned’ what objects should look like.
Our brains make assumptions about how things look based on the colours and expected lighting. This is why the brown square appears different on the ‘shaded’ side of the block to the brown square on the top (left) even though you can see that they are actually the same colour (right)Â
The famous ‘gold and white’ dress is an example of how our assumptions about lighting change our colour perceptions. In this photo, you can see how the darker side of the dress appears closer to blue while the light side appears whiteÂ
Normally, this helps us fill in the blanks of our visual perceptions and allows us to experience the world.
But when those assumptions go wrong, it can lead us to perceive colours in the world incorrectly in the form of optical illusions.
Just like with the famous blue-black or white-gold dress, our brains make assumptions about lighting conditions which actually change the colours we see.
Your results on the test will vary quite strongly depending on whether you are outside against a green park or inside against white walls.
This is why the real Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue Test is typically conducted under standardised lighting conditions to remove any unwanted interference.
