Color discrimination threshold of human vision for textiles under different illumination conditions

Abstract

In this work, the varying color discrimination thresholds of human vision for textiles with a wide range of physical color attributes under different illumination conditions were examined. It was found that, regardless of the illumination condition and the color attributes of the textiles, people cannot generally perceive the color differences of textiles smaller than 4.25 Δ E*ab. Meanwhile, the color discrimination threshold was found to be significantly affected by the illuminance of illuminants and all the physical color attributes of lightness, chroma, and hue of the textiles observed. People were generally better able to distinguish color differences in bright environments with the illuminance of 2000 lux than in darker ones with 100 lux. In addition, color differences between dark and less-saturated textiles were found to be generally easier to be perceived than those between light and saturated textiles under various illuminants. In addition, regardless of the illuminant, color differences between neutral colored textiles were easier to be perceived than those between chromatic colored textiles with the mean color discrimination threshold of 2.85 and 4.42 Δ E*ab, respectively. In particular, among chromatic colored textiles, color differences between yellow textiles were generally the hardest to be perceived with the mean threshold of 5.58 Δ E*ab.