Or: How to Confuse Your Brain, Offend Artists, and Break Reality in One Visual Trip
Let’s talk about something that will make your inner artist squeal with existential dread: experiencing a brand new color. Not just a quirky shade of mauve or another pretentious Crayola™ invention like “Jazzberry Jam.” No, I’m talking about a color you've never seen before, one your rods and cones weren’t invited to preview, a shade so new that even Pantone would give up and throw its hands in the air.
This isn’t about “periwinkle” versus “perilous ink.” This is about trying to describe something you physically can’t imagine unless your brain is basically on mushrooms, LSD, or you’re one of the few people to cheat nature via a neurological glitch. Which begs the question: what’s it like to experience a color that doesn’t exist—yet? Buckle up, friend. Reality’s about to get weird.
Chapter One: The Tyranny of the Color Wheel
Let’s get one thing straight: your brain is a filthy little liar, especially when it comes to vision. It sees three kinds of wavelengths—short (blue), medium (green), and long (red). That’s it. RGB. It’s not just the basis for your monitor; it’s the whole damn palette for your puny biological color vision. Anything else is just your neurons doing improv.
You think purple exists? That’s your brain faking it. There’s no “purple wavelength” in nature. It’s a mashup remix of red and blue, and your optic nerve is just going along with the bit.
So when someone asks, “What if you could see a new color?” what they’re really asking is, “What if you overclocked your brain so hard it accidentally downloaded an alien visual plugin?”
And yes, it’s possible. Kind of. Maybe.
Chapter Two: Enter the Forbidden Colors
There’s a phrase you’ve probably never heard unless you hang out in Reddit’s weirdest subforums or accidentally enrolled in graduate-level neuroscience: “forbidden colors.”
Sounds edgy, right? Like the color Satan wears to brunch.
But forbidden colors—also called “impossible colors”—are hues the brain theoretically shouldn’t be able to process, like reddish-green or yellowish-blue. Not “muddy brown between ketchup and mustard,” but literally both colors at once. Like Schrödinger’s Crayon.
Why can’t we see them? Because of a little turf war inside your eyeballs. The way your vision works is based on something called opponent-process theory, where colors are coded as binary opposites:
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Red vs. Green
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Blue vs. Yellow
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Black vs. White
Try to see reddish green. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
…You can’t, can you? That’s because when your brain activates red, it simultaneously deactivates green, and vice versa. It’s like trying to be awake and asleep at the same time, or trying to enjoy pineapple on pizza while maintaining self-respect.
But some researchers, like the mad geniuses from the 1980s and early 2000s, figured out how to hack the system.
They used optical tricks—like retinal stabilization—to force the eyes into perceiving color combinations that normally cancel each other out. And the result? People reported seeing entirely new hues, colors that can’t be described in English, French, or whatever language TikTok uses now.
Chapter Three: How to Trip Without Drugs
So what’s it like to see one of these colors?
According to people who’ve done the retinal stabilization experiments (read: professional lab rats with a high tolerance for lasers and boredom), it’s a cross between wonder, confusion, and a migraine. They describe colors that feel like they shouldn’t exist. Not a shade. Not a blend. Not “a bluish red.” No. Something new. Something wrong.
One person described it as “the color of the aftertaste of metal,” which is somehow both poetic and clinically unhelpful. Another said it was “like seeing a thought,” which sounds like they failed a drug test afterward.
Some people reported a hyper-real color that seemed to “glow” in a way other colors don’t. Not neon. Not metallic. Just wrong—but fascinatingly so. Like a dog standing on its hind legs and reciting Shakespeare. You know it’s not natural, but you can’t look away.
To be clear: these aren’t hallucinations in the sense of seeing dancing elves or your ex in every cloud formation. These are visual experiences your brain tries to rationalize and fails, like asking a goldfish to explain algebra.
Chapter Four: The Color Elitists
Now, here’s where things get philosophical—and obnoxiously so.
Once people hear that “new colors” might be possible, they fall into two camps:
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Team Awe: “Wow, that’s amazing! The universe is bigger than we thought!”
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Team Why Does It Matter: “Cool, you saw blurple. I still have to pay rent.”
The first group buys kaleidoscopes and follows synesthetes on Instagram. The second group wonders why funding goes to color research instead of curing back pain or fixing the DMV. Honestly, both are valid.
But color elitists—the ones who claim they’ve seen a “new color” and won’t shut up about it—are the worst. They treat it like a spiritual awakening. As if experiencing a forbidden color makes them too enlightened to engage in small talk anymore.
You’ll know you’ve met one when they say something like, “After I saw the color beyond blue, I just couldn’t go back to retail.”
Chapter Five: Tetrachromats, Mantis Shrimp, and Other Show-Offs
If you’re feeling left out, don’t worry. Evolution has not blessed all of us equally. Most humans have three types of cone cells in their eyes. But some (mostly women, due to X-chromosome magic) have four. These people are known as tetrachromats, and they can see up to 100 million colors instead of the measly 1 million you’re stuck with.
It’s like going from a flip phone to a 4K OLED in one genetic leap.
And then there’s the mantis shrimp, which has twelve photoreceptors. It lives in the ocean, punches crabs with the force of a bullet, and sees colors we can’t even theorize about. If reincarnation exists, aim high.
Scientists once tried to display what a mantis shrimp sees, and the result was just a mess of neon that looked like someone vomited on a rave flyer. Turns out you can’t show someone a new color on a screen calibrated for human eyes. You’d need new eyes. Or a different species.
So yeah, evolution has been gatekeeping color this whole time. Rude.
Chapter Six: Can AI Make a New Color?
Of course, it wouldn’t be a real blog in 2025 without dragging AI into the conversation. Can AI create a brand new color?
The answer is: it thinks it can, but no, it cannot. AI can only generate outputs within the visible spectrum and RGB space unless you literally invent a new display that projects electromagnetic frequencies outside the human range—which you can’t see anyway.
In other words, AI is like that overconfident intern who says, “I already finished the project,” but what they did was just rename the same file and change the font to Comic Sans.
Sure, you can generate a color no one’s named yet. But if you can see it, it’s not new. It’s just lonely.
Chapter Seven: How to Trick Your Brain into Seeing the Impossible
You want the forbidden fruit, don’t you? Here’s your (probably disappointing) DIY method:
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Find a stereogram designed to show forbidden colors (they exist).
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Stare at it like your life depends on it.
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Hold your gaze so the image remains fixed on your retina.
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Wait.
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Wait longer.
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Blink a few times and question your life choices.
If you’re lucky, your neurons will have a temporary identity crisis and generate a color you can’t name. If you’re not lucky, you’ll just get a headache and hate me for suggesting it.
You could also try psychedelics, but that’s another blog, possibly titled “How to Experience All the Colors and Then Cry in a Forest.”
Chapter Eight: Why This Matters, Even If It Doesn’t
You might be wondering: why care? Why chase invisible rainbows and forbidden hues?
Because it reminds us that perception isn’t truth. Just because you haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Your brain curates reality like a snobby art gallery, only showing you what it thinks you can handle.
Experiencing a “new color” isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about cracking open the limits of perception, however briefly, and realizing your senses are just filters, not facts.
Also, it’s fun to freak out your friends by telling them you saw a color they’ll never see. You can even name it something annoying like “Yelurple” and watch them spiral.
Chapter Nine: So, What’s It Like?
We promised an answer, so here’s the most honest one you’ll get:
Seeing a new color feels like being aware of your own brain trying to build reality in real time—and glitching out like a bad video game. It’s like witnessing a visual typo. Like tasting a word. Like reading a sentence that ends with a flavor instead of a period.
You can’t describe it. You can’t recreate it. And you can’t convince anyone it really happened. Which makes it the ultimate hipster experience.
You were there. You saw it. No one else can.
Final Thoughts: Chasing Color Ghosts
Trying to experience a new color is like trying to imagine a new primary number between 1 and 2. You can get close. You can hallucinate. You can tinker with perception until something breaks.
But ultimately, it’s an act of curiosity. A weird flex against the limitations of biology. And maybe, just maybe, a reminder that even the simplest things—like color—are more complicated, more mysterious, and more ridiculously glitchy than we ever imagined.
So go ahead. Stare into that stereogram. Chase the unseeable. Try to describe the indescribable.
And if you manage to see the forbidden color?
Please don’t name it “Greeblow.” Have some class.