how mirrors seem to be the color of what they are reflecting while also looking silver.

Question

I have been wondering this since I was a child and it’s never been explained in a way I can understand.

I’m looking at my bathroom mirror and it looks silver. But how is that possible because it’s reflecting whatever is in front of it?

So when I look at the reflection of the towel in the mirror i see blue, when I see the reflection of the wall I see white, when I see the reflection of the shower curtain I see the color of the shower curtain. But when I look at the mirror as a whole it seems silver?

I think I have read that mirrors have silver backings which makes sense why I see silver. But I don’t understand how it’s possible to see the exact reflection of my bathroom but it’s also silver?

In: Other

Answer 1

“Looking silver” is what we call surfaces that reflect their surroundings. It’s not actually a color. So “seeming to be the color of what they’re reflecting” and “looking silver” are one and the same thing, just different ways of describing the same appearance.

If you put a silver object in a uniformly illuminated room with blank walls it wouldn’t “look silver”, it would look like one uniform color. But that’s a really contrived setup that “never” occurs in our day-to-day experience so we don’t associate that with “looking silver.”