Although a team of California scientists have discovered what is being called a new color, it may be a while before it winds up in any consumer products.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, used laser beams on five participants to stimulate cone-cells in their retinas, which led to sightings of the same ultra-saturated blue-green. Their findings were published last week in Science Advances. Ren Ng, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, co-authored the study and participated in the experiment along with two of his colleagues. Each subject in the study has a laser beamed into one of their retinas, which have cone cells that control an individual’s perception of color.
Each participant had three cone cells “S,” “L” and “M,” which are sensitive to wavelengths of blue, red and green. Using a laser to stimulate M cone cells, which are sensitive to wavelengths of green, participants were said to have seen a color that had not been seen in natural vision.
Anyone who remembers the global online debate about the color of a dress in 2015 understands that colors can literally be in the eye of the beholder. Some saw the dress in question as white and gold, and others saw it as black and blue.
Ng acknowledged that human color vision is “highly adaptive and subjective.” He said, “In color vision science, we have to be very careful.”
For the olo study, to know that the subjects were truly seeing a blue-green that was more saturated than anything possible in the normal world, the subjects had to directly compare olo against the most saturated natural teal. That was created with a laser in the teal wavelength. Olo looked much more saturated, according to Ng, who said that olo needed to be desaturated with white light before it could be matched to the natural teal.
Given that olo can now only be seen by directly stimulating thousands of cells in the retina, it will not be utilized in consumer products anytime soon. Ng said that it could not be produced as a paint or fabric, but it is theoretically possible to incorporate olo into display technology in the future.
Envisioning olo requires some imagination. Ng noted that the color in the large square that accompanies this article is meant to only give readers a sense of olo. He said, “But this is extremely pale and what distinguishes olo is how incredibly saturated it appears. If you could dial the saturation of the square that is shown here higher and higher, you could get to a blue-green that looks like peacock feathers. Beyond that, you would get to laser light at the teal wavelength. That is the definition of the most saturated teal one can see in the real world.”
“Olo is the color you get, if you could dial the saturation beyond. Directly compared to olo, laser teal pales in comparison. That may enable folks to imagine olo,” Ng said.
Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said that she has read about olo. But having not been one of the five people who viewed the actual color, she said it would be difficult to find the closest Pantone match. But she added, “As it is described, there is the possibility that it is close to a deeply saturated Pantone blue-green that is already in the system.”
Eiseman believes that talk about the possibility of a “new” color will cause a lot of buzz on social media and via media outlets. That will bring attention to that blue-green color grouping such as a deep teal that already exists, according to Eiseman.
As of now, Ng’s team at the University of Berkeley is focused on the basic science and not on display technology commercialization. But one of the next things on the horizon in basic science is to see whether the human brain can perceive a dimension of color beyond the rainbow. He said, “If so, I suspect that would drive a lot of interest in trying to bring it into commercial display technology.”
The prospect of such limitless colors could bode well for designers, artists and consumers. Eiseman said, “People are always fascinated by that which can be imagined, but not actually seen.”
The public’s current zeal for space travel may be heightening interest in all things blue and teal. Eiseman said, “The olo type blue and blue-greens are very much connected to space travel, as those are the shadings that come into our consciousness when we think of outer terrestrial distances. We can only imagine what lies out there in outer space and a ‘new’ color certainly fits into that mysterious realm.”
The same might be said of the vibrant green comet that is believed to have broken apart. Astronomers and amateur skywatchers had been anticipating seeing the Comet C/2025 F2 (SWAN), with their naked eyes light up the night sky later this month.
Regarding novel colors that could potentially appear in consumer products, Ng’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, is at work on another research project on tetrachromacy that is more relevant. Tetrachromacy is a rare ability that, according to a 2010 study, up to 12 percent of women worldwide have, due to having four types of cone cells in their retinas which allows them to distinguish hundreds of millions of colors. Most people have three types of cones and can tell apart several million types of colors. Their project, “Theory of Human Tetrachromatic Color Experience and Printing,” will explore how more of those colors might be put into practice.
