Why does people seem to see a item in different colour in a darker surrounding?

Question

and it return to normal when there is sufficient light.does our perception of colour is affected by the amount of light?

Is it normal and common?

Answer 1

Yes, it is common, and that is because it is a real phenomenon.

Take that sports car that looks bright red in summer afternoon sunshine. At night, it will seem to be black. The car color absorbs most light frequencies, and only reflects the red ones.
But red is near the infrared end of the color spectrum, and in low light, is has nothing to reflect.

But this is more a matter of biology, than of physics. Our human vision is not very good in dim light. So what the object reflects or not, has to be taken into account along with our eyes'' ability to perceive the reflected color.

We have different receptors in our eyes--cones and rods. Ssome perceive individiual colors, and others just perceive how much light there is . At night, or in a dimly--lit room, our color vision almost vanishes.

Answer 2

The human eye has evolved to capture not true color, but color differential. How good would an eye be if it was to spot a tiger differently as a function of ambiant light? That is why we have optical illusions where a shade appears darker than another one as a function of its immediate surrounding, but one would always spot the tiger color and stripes no matter what color the surroundings are.

This goes for well illuminated areas. What happens in semi-darkness?
Well, the eyes has two type of photoreceptors, the rods and the cones. The cones can preceive color, but the rods are more sensitive (but only see in black and white). When the light dims, the cones stop working, but the rods still see, so what you percive then is only shades of grey. So, yes, our preception of color is affected by the amount of light.

Answer 3

i think it is extremely uncomplicated. First, the sensing cells in our eyes are divided into 2 varieties, one is delicate to color, yet artwork purely in vivid easy, one is very delicate to easy yet do not distinguish color. So while the our environment will become darkish, the colour-sensing cells won't be able to artwork properly and the colorings we observed are diminished. wish it solutions the question.