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Display Colour Test

A run through greys, primaries and secondaries at full screen. Useful for spotting a colour cast, a channel that is not pulling its weight, or tinting toward one corner.

Colour problems show up across a whole panel, not in a corner of one. Start the test and step through with a click or the arrow keys.

Press F for fullscreen, Esc to exit.

What the display colour test shows

The greys are the diagnostic ones. A neutral grey should be neutral: if the 50% patch looks warm or blue, the panel or its profile has a cast, and that cast is affecting every image you look at without you noticing.

The primaries check each channel on its own. If red looks orange, or blue looks purple, something in the signal path is shifting it — a bad cable, an aggressive picture mode, or a colour profile the operating system is applying.

What to look for on each colour

On the greys, look for a tint and for uneven brightness across the panel. On the primaries, look for patchiness and for areas where the colour looks washed out or darker.

If you have two displays side by side, running this on both at once is the fastest way to see a cast that would be invisible on one screen alone — the eye adapts to a tint within seconds when there is nothing to compare against.

What this test cannot tell you

This is a viewing test, not a measurement. Judging colour accuracy properly needs a colorimeter held against the panel; a web page has no access to what the display actually emitted.

Questions

Why does grey look slightly blue on my monitor?

Usually the colour temperature setting. Most displays ship at around 9300K, which is noticeably blue; 6500K is the standard for accurate work. Check your monitor’s own menu rather than your operating system settings.

Can this calibrate my monitor?

No. Calibration needs a hardware colorimeter measuring what the panel actually emits. This shows you known colour values so you can judge by eye, which finds obvious faults but cannot produce a profile.

Should colours look identical on two monitors?

Almost never, unless both are calibrated to the same target. Panel technology, backlight, age and picture mode all shift colour. Side by side is the fastest way to see how far apart yours are.

Is the display colour test free?

Yes — free, with no account, no download and no limit. It is a web page, so it runs on any device with a modern browser.

Do I need to be fullscreen?

For anything involving the whole panel, yes. Press F, or the fullscreen button. On a desktop browser F11 also hides the browser toolbars, which matters for the tests where a bright strip at the top of the screen would affect what you are looking at.