What colors of the rainbow do people with color blindness see?

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What colors of the rainbow do people with color blindness see?

Generally, people with color blindness have difficulty articulating what they perceive, but scientists suggest the typical colorblind person might see colors as varying shades of blue and yellow. For example, what a color-normal person calls purple and what a colorblind person calls purple may not be the same color. Or, both people may look at the same color and call it different things.

A person's color vision falls into one of the following categories:

Full color vision/Trichromacy: If you were born with normal-functioning color pigments in all three cone types in your eyes, you’re a trichromat. You’d see six colors in your rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

Color vision deficiency/Dichromacy: If you were born with missing or malfunctioning (not working) cones of one of the three types in your eyes, you’re a dichromat or dichromatous. What colors you see depends upon which cones are missing or malfunctioning.

If you’re a dichromat, there are several specific types of color deficiency you might experience, including:

Red-Green Color Deficiency:

  • Protanopia: In this case, your long-length red-responsive photoreceptors also aren’t functioning correctly, so you won’t see reds or greens properly. Colors that contain red will also look different to you. Your rainbow will consist mainly of what trichromats call blues and golds.
  • Deuteranopia: This time your green-responsive photoreceptors aren’t functioning. If you’re a deuteranope, your rainbow also appears as a series of blues and golds.
  • Protanomaly: In this type of color deficiency, you have some red-responsive cones, but they aren’t working correctly. Your rainbow appears muted. Red may appear as dark gray and every color that contains red may be less bright.
  • Deuteranomaly: In this case, green-responsive cones don’t work as they should. It’s the most common form of color blindness. Your rainbow is most likely blues, yellows and generally muted colors.

Blue-Yellow Color Deficiency:

  • Tritanopia: This is blue-yellow color blindness. It means you have no blue-responsive cone cells. Your rainbow may contain reds, light blues, pinks and lavender.
  • Tritanomaly: This type of color blindness is when your blue-responsive cone cells work, but not as well as a full color-sighted person. Your rainbow has greener blues and there is little or no yellow.

Fully Color Blind/Monochromacy: If you’re a monochromat, you have a very limited or no ability to see color. Your vision might be a lot like watching a black and white television or an old black and white movie. Your rainbow would appear in varying shades of gray.

Monochromats come in two types:

  • Blue cone monochromacy: In this type of monochromacy, you only have one cone type that contains working photoreceptor cells. When only one cone type works, it’s difficult to tell between certain colors, and mostly you see grays. Blue cone monochromats may also have poor vision in general, light sensitivity, nystagmus or shaking of the eyes, and near-sightedness. Blue cone monochromacy is rare.
  • Rod monochromacy: In this condition your retinal rod photoreceptors work but all or most cones are absent or malfunctioning. It’s also called achromatopsia. You see everything in grayscale. Achromats are also likely to suffer from low vision, nystagmus and light sensitivity.

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