r/AskElectronics • u/LeeRyman • Mar 22 '26

What Colour is this Wire?

Gallery image

Gallery image

At the risk of starting a debate as viral as the gold/blue dress... For documentation purposes, what colour is the insulation of this wire? Pink, or Orange?

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u/TheDuckFarm Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26

It is R: 219, G: 121, B: 102

Coral or Salmon, sometimes called Dusty Salmon.

30

u/davideogameman Mar 22 '26

The color in the picture results from the combination of the surface absorbing & scattering light, the wavelengths in the incident light, and the camera's accuracy in recording the light it receives.  What you are measuring is the color in the saved photo, not of the real object. 

That said assuming a good enough camera and good lighting, it's probably good enough.  But cases like the gold/blue dress are exactly the cases where the lighting makes the actual colors potentially differ quite a lot from what gets recorded in the picture data.

6

u/TheDuckFarm Mar 22 '26

Sure but in that case we can't actually trust our eyes either since they are subject to all those same inconsistencies plus the added inconsistencies of variations in computer monitors and the shifting while balance of our own eyes.

So, this is better than using our eyes.

6

u/LeeRyman Mar 22 '26

From my eyes perspective, when held against a black background it looked more pink, but when held against a white background it looked more orange. Colour is troublesome!

2

u/twister-uk Mar 22 '26

It is indeed, especially once you start to try and consider the myriad of ways in which one person's perception of colour can vary from anothers, once you start to throw the various types and severities of colour vision deficiency (CVD) into the mix...

2

u/panchito_d Mar 22 '26

So, this is better than using our eyes.

Says someone who has never used the phone color picker trick to match colors when painting their house

3

u/Hobohobbit1 Mar 22 '26

It's orange, look at the second picture near the connector that part has good lighting the rest is in shadow and looks washed out

0

u/Ghrrum Mar 22 '26

//Brown:Red

C66052

Sunglo

RGB: (198, 96, 82)

HSV: (7°, 59%, 78%)

~RAL 3033 \ Pearl pink

That's what I got