What’s the difference between red pigment and red light?

Question

As in, when you have a red light, the light is literally red — but when you have clothing that is dyed red, it’s reflecting red light. I thought originally that objects “reflected” color by their electrons absorbing all other colors and then emitting the color it was reflecting (in this case, absorbing all other wavelengths and emitting red). But then how does this set the object aside from a light source?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Red light generates only the wavelength that we perceive as red.

Red pigment absorbs all visible wavelengths except for the wavelength we see as red.