Blue or green? The new colour quiz baffling the internet

Another day, another weird internet case of "what colour do you see?". Photo / 123RF

It may sound like a seemingly easy question, being asked to name whether the colour in front of you is blue or green, but a tricky new quiz throws any confidence you had in solving the 50/50 option out of the window.

In the baffling new illusion, opticians have placed five strikingly similar shades of green and blue next to each other.

They say if you can't spot the subtle difference, it does not mean you have a colour vision deficiency, instead they claim the difference is only how the brain perceives the colour.

Optical Express drafted the quiz, which tricked hundreds of people in a survey, as part of National Eye Health Week.

One of the colours the 1000 people quizzed struggled to spot included Tiffany Blue, trademarked by the jewellery retailer. Around two fifths of respondents polled assumed the shade was blue – even those it is closer to green on the RGB spectrum (113, 208, 197).

Stephen Hannan, clinical services director at Optical Express, said: "Isn't the brain an extraordinary thing? Every single person is unique and as a result, our brains process information differently. Depending on how you interpret colours, one person might see it one way, while the very next person who looks at it might see it differently."

Mr Hannan explained light enters the eye, passes through the natural lens and hits the retina, which is the light sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. The light is converted to an electrical signal which travels along the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the brain.

The brain makes its own unique interpretation of this electrical signal, meaning people often see different colours to others.

Mr Hannan added: "It is not surprising that many respondents changed their mind when seeing the colour in contrast to the two blue shades. We perceive an object's colour based on a comparison to its surrounding shades, not on the actual colour itself."

So which are green and which are blue?

What do you see?

ANSWERS:
COLOUR 1. This shade is blue. R23, G103, B150
COLOUR 2. This shade is green. R0, G122 and B116
COLOUR 3. This shade is blue. R118, G195, B230
COLOUR 4. This shade is green. R113, G208, B197
COLOUR 5. This shade is green. R35, G151, B128