Color identification...Men vs Women

[ladyciel]

Any woman who has attempted to converse with her man on the topics of wedding colors, paint shades, or that certain color of gemstone she''s hunting down ("you know....that perfect shade of seafoam!"....DH''s eyes glaze over), can most likely relate to this comic.

(Yes, there are exceptions, but this could NOT be more true for my husband. In fact, he''s the one who sent it to me.)

From http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/?p=1406:

 

[MichelleCarmen]

My husband is color blind and so he cannot tell if a color is blue or purple. He seems fine with all other colors, but he simply cannot see purple and he will ARGUE with me about what a color is. Drives me nuts. Luckily neither of my kids are so they''re on my side

 

[Black Jade]

I must be a guy and not have realized it. That chart is way too involved for me.

Maybe that''s why I''m not good at decorating and can''t share in those conversations with my friends?

 

[elrohwen]

Date: 5/7/2010 2:30:30 PM
Author: MC
My husband is color blind and so he cannot tell if a color is blue or purple. He seems fine with all other colors, but he simply cannot see purple and he will ARGUE with me about what a color is. Drives me nuts. Luckily neither of my kids are so they''re on my side

I had a co-worker like this. We went on a trip once and shared a rental car and when we got to the car he says "I''m not driving a purple car! Here, you take the keys". I tried to tell him it was blue, but he wouldn''t believe me

Oh, he was also the key person who developed a very popular kids food product made up of different colored pieces. It was hilarious when he would come around to other people and ask "Does this look like purple now? Is this one red?" Not sure whose brilliant idea it was to put him on that project.

 

[princesss]

Hahahahaha, SO TRUE! BF and I have this conversation all the time. "It''s kind of an eggplanty, plum-ish colour." "Oh, so....purple?"

His favourite thing to tell me about decorating is "Princesss, there are only 7 colours. Anything else is just in your imagination."

 

[Amber St. Clare]

I spent some time in design school many years ago. I remember trying to discuss colors when my husband and I moved into our home. I tried to pin him down on shades/intensities/tones and he said: "don''t bother me with subtleties" I have a virtual free hand decorating. I run colors/patterns etc. by him as a curtesy but I can''t EVER remember him vetoing anything I''d decided on.

 

[Mrs Mitchell]

Oh dear. I can only see red, green, blue, orange and yellow. DH is an architect and picks paint colours for large developments occasionally. He has a real eye for it. I just paint stuff white. With white trim.

 

[ksinger]

OMG! Hilarioius. Mine is red/green colorblind to a serious degree, and colors in general - NOT his thing. I remember when we were looking at kitchen cabinets. I did all the footwork of course, narrowing the endless choices down to something manageable for him. So I get 3 choices. I take him over and say, "OK, hon, look at these and tell me which one you like the best. This utterly withering look jumps onto his face and the eyes begin to roll, "Oh for cryin'' out loud woman, they''re all BROWN." I said, "Fine...light, medium, or dark?" Sunshine restored, utter relief. "Oh, well then, medium." Problem solved.

Seriously though, he was the easiest person on the planet to work with. His only color criteria is that it not make him want to hurl, otherwise I can have anything I want. WiN!!

 

[laine]

Date: 5/7/2010 2:30:30 PM
Author: MC
My husband is color blind and so he cannot tell if a color is blue or purple. He seems fine with all other colors, but he simply cannot see purple and he will ARGUE with me about what a color is. Drives me nuts. Luckily neither of my kids are so they''re on my side

My fiance is the same way, can''t tell blue and purple apart! I once said something about his purple plaid shirt and he looked so confused--he thought it was blue. He also has trouble with subtle shades, so its useless to ask him which color he prefers (like with two similar paint colors)--they look the same to him!

 

[pennquaker09]

I''m a girl then . . .

 

[princesss]

Date: 5/7/2010 5:42:18 PM
Author: pennquaker09
I''m a girl then . . .

It''s nice on the girl side. We have chocolate, and funny movies.

 

[jaysonsmom]

Every male on my husband's side of the family is little colorblind, and I just found out my son is too!

Dh is always mixing up navy blue with black (he wears them together and thinks they match)
My son cannot tell khaki from olive green....he kept asking where his khaki shorts were (he doesn't own any), they're olive.

 

[lulu]

Dh is color blind. When we started dating he told me he clipped his socks together before washing them so they wouldn''t get mixed up. I looked in his sock drawer one day and saw twenty pairs clipped together. Each pair had one blue and one black sock.

 

[Kaleigh]

DH is color blind. So is DD. It''s harder for a girl to be color blind.. She soooo wants to know color, and hard to explain certain shades to her. She loves color!!!

 

[PumpkinPie]

I used to work under a chemistry supervisor who was colour-blind.. made for interesting discussions at work !

 

[zoebartlett]

That's funny and true for us! My husband thinks any shade of white is simply white. I point out that it (whatever we're talking about at the moment) could be eggshell, beige, oatmeal, tan, cream, etc. He just rolls his eyes and says, "yeah, it's WHITE."

ETA: I love everyone's stories!

 

[radiantquest]

Date: 5/7/2010 3:13:26 PM
Author: princesss
Hahahahaha, SO TRUE! BF and I have this conversation all the time. ''It''s kind of an eggplanty, plum-ish colour.'' ''Oh, so....purple?''

His favourite thing to tell me about decorating is ''Princesss, there are only 7 colours. Anything else is just in your imagination.''

I love that! So sweet yet completely male.

Kaleigh-That must be tough for a girl. Poor thing.

Neither myself or DH are color blind and he knows color. When we decided to paint our living room we wanted bolder colors and had decided on a lavender type color then at the last minute when ordering the paint he says that he also wants this redish purple color. It looks so totally awesome together. I hate to admit it, but he might be better at it than I am.

 

[yssie]

That must''ve been interesting, Maevie...

That chart is hilarious - spot on, as far as FI goes

 

[vc10um]

Date: 5/7/2010 6:06:52 PM
Author: lulu
Dh is color blind. When we started dating he told me he clipped his socks together before washing them so they wouldn''t get mixed up. I looked in his sock drawer one day and saw twenty pairs clipped together. Each pair had one blue and one black sock.

Lulu, I think this one takes the cake!!!

 

[charbie]

Yeah, my husband doesn''t know colors very well. I almost wish I could say he was colorblind so he had a decent excuse. He loves bright colors, and when we were painting our foyer and family room, I picked out this great dark grayish green for the foyer, and wanted a paler color for the rest. He kept gravitating towards these lime greens, and I kept cringing. Over and over he said, "I don''t want grayish colors." The color I picked out was from the same paint strip as the foyer!! It couldnt have been a better match!
He finally settled, and once we painted MY color, he looked and said, "wow. It looks great."

 

[lizzyann]

THis is so my husband!!!!! It cracks me up. LOL! He tells me to only use primary colors or primary color + ish. So for example, if I want to tell him to grab my turquoise tshirt, I instead have to tell him to grab my blue or bluish tshirt. So funny.....

 

[Cehrabehra]

Date: 5/7/2010 3:13:26 PM
Author: princesss
Hahahahaha, SO TRUE! BF and I have this conversation all the time. ''It''s kind of an eggplanty, plum-ish colour.'' ''Oh, so....purple?''


His favourite thing to tell me about decorating is ''Princesss, there are only 7 colours. Anything else is just in your imagination.''

Ask Deco how many shades of purple there are

 

[Karl_K]

lol I have always used primary secondary color which really complexes some people.
blueish red
orangish red
purplish red
pinkish red
Then
bright red
dark red
med red
light red
sometimes:
blood red
Pepsi red

So I may say something is:
med orangish red

 

[LGK]

Oh god I just had this conversation with DH yesterday. We''re painting our commercial property. Me and a good girlfriend immediately suggest updating the Uber ''80s color scheme. Grey is what we both want. So we bombard DH with requests for "Some light warm grey and dark warm grey paint swatches, and light cool grey and dark cool grey ones." He looked so totally boggled it was HILARIOUS. Poor boy! He just cleaned out the grey swatches for us to paw through. We spent about ten minutes discussing the minutia of shades of grey, and what exactly we meant by warm or cool. He had seriously no idea what we were saying by that!

 

[jas]

Hilarious!

 

[Hera]

I remember in a psychology class at university talking about the different things,different genders are taught. One of them was color identification for men and an example of the opposite was ease of joke telling for men. Generally, more men are comfortable telling/receiving jokes than women are. Obviously, there are discrepancies in that as there are some men who can tell different shades and some women who are good joke tellers.

 

[JSM]

It''s nice (sort of) to see how many others have color blind family members! DH is one of the most severe cases I''ve ever seen. The poor man can only see the primary colors - blue, red, and yellow. He cannot distinguish greens, oranges, purples, pinks, and anything not a bold color just looks gray to him. Anything too dark looks black.

He won''t go shopping alone anymore, ever, because he is just overwhelmed with trying to match. He once came home with a "white" button down dress shirt (it was pink).

 

[ksinger]

Well, here is an interesting story. My hubs is quite red/green colorblind these days. But it didn''t really show up until late: he was not colorblind as a child, and apparently didn''t really notice it coming on as he got older. So one day, he and a female family member are outside and she comments on that china berry bush over there being so lovely with all those red berries. He''s like, "What?" So he starts walking up closer, and closer...and as soon as he got close enough to make out the shapes of the berries, he says they all flashed vivid red. Said it truly freaked him out. One second they weren''t there, then they were, red as red could be.

He told a doctor about it, and the doc told him that since he had not been colorblind as a child, that his brain remembered "red" and since someone told him that the berries were red, that once he could make them out, his brain filled in the red color so he could "see" it.

I can tell you though, tie shopping with the boy is an adventure. All those tone-on-tone, jacquard patterns, and shiny silks, they do NOT look the same to him as they do to me. I''ll see a gorgeous tie, and he''ll emphatically say NO! because trying to focus on the color or pattern almost makes him ill. He trusts my color sense, but I have to be careful with low-contrast, pattern-y ties.

Poor baby. Not seeing reds properly would be hell. I love reds.

 

[DoctorD]

My wife and I were talking about this. We think men see all the colors women do, they just can't put a precise name to many of them (pretty much what your chart indicates).

There's not usually anything in a boy/man's upbringing that requires him to differentiate between various shades of a color. For girls/women, though, being exposed to all the make-up, lipstick, eye shadow, and other cosmetic shades pretty much forces them to learn to be precise about shades of color, and to ascribe names to all the minutely-different variations.

I bet a woman who was never into make-up would be more like a man in her ability to name various shades of colors. Likewise, a guy who goes into a profession like decorating would be more like a woman in his ability to name shades.

 

[ksinger]

My wife and I were talking about this. We think men see all the colors women do, they just can't put a precise name to many of them (pretty much what your chart indicates).

There's not usually anything in a boy/man's upbringing that requires him to differentiate between various shades of a color. For girls/women, though, being exposed to all the make-up, lipstick, eye shadow, and other cosmetic shades pretty much forces them to learn to be precise about shades of color, and to ascribe names to all the minutely-different variations.

I bet a woman who was never into make-up would be more like a man in her ability to name various shades of colors. Likewise, a guy who goes into a profession like decorating would be more like a woman in his ability to name shades.

That sounds good in theory, but color identification is not primarily socially driven by makeup application, it's genetic, and pretty well-documented. Women really do discriminate more colors - especially in certain wavelengths - hence the need for more names, and some women apparently, are tetrachromats, and see many millions more separate colors than any normal woman, or man.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120907-men-women-see-differently-science-health-vision-sex/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/27/tetrachromatic-super-vision-women-100-million-colors_n_1631480.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy