What is it about the color yellow exactly that makes it subjectively less visible against a white background than say, blue or red?

Question

What is it about the color yellow exactly that makes it subjectively less visible against a white background than say, blue or red?

In: 53

Answer 1

Put three squares—blue, red, and yellow—on a white background in a paint program. Convert the image to grayscale, and you’ll see that there is far less difference between the formerly yellow square and the white background compared to the formerly red and blue squares.

That’s because yellow has a high brightness value, far brighter than blue or red. You can see from the hex codes below that in terms of brightness, yellow is far closer to white than red or blue:

* Black: 000000
* White: FFFFFF
* Red: FF0000
* Green: 00FF00
* Blue: 0000FF
* Yellow: FFFF00

Your eyes use more than just color to see. It also relies heavily on *contrast.* Yellow on white creates poor contrast.

Cyan (00FFFF) and magenta (FF00FF) stand out against white better than yellow (FFFF00) because the last two digits in the six-digit hex code are for blue (a dark color) which yellow lacks.