Color

light · vision · science

How your eyes see color. Your eyes have special cells called cones that detect different wavelengths of light. When light enters your eye, these cone cells send signals to your brain, which figures out what color you're looking at.

Colors come from light. Color isn't actually in objects themselves. When light hits something, the object either absorbs some light, reflects some light, or lets some light pass through it. Your eyes see the light that bounces back or comes through, and that's what you perceive as color.

Animals see different colors. Not all animals see color the same way you do. Bees can see ultraviolet light that humans can't detect at all, so flowers look completely different to them. Some animals have fewer cone types than humans, so they see fewer colors.

Three types of cones. Most humans have three types of cone cells in their eyes, each sensitive to different wavelengths of light: red, green, and blue. Your brain mixes signals from all three types to create the millions of colors you can see.