Lighting Causes Hat Color Confusion

Occurred on November 17, 2021 / Cleveland, Ohio, USA

: I was with my girls and got distracted in the close out section of our local grocery store buying Christmas decor and some winter gear. I mentioned to my girls, 'Oh, cute green hat!' and watched my daughter grab it off the shelf to put it in the cart. When we got home later that evening and unpacked the bags in the dining room, I noticed the hat was brown and we were all super confused how we could have accidentally grabbed the wrong hat since I clearly remember saying 'cute green hat.' and watched my daughter pick it up and put it in the cart! Then it clicked, since I have a background in the fine arts, work professionally in interior design and have actually taught a color theory for interiors course, it had to be a metamerism phenomenon. I had never seen anything change so drastically! I started walking from room to room to see what type of light would make it change back to green. Seeing it change from room to room was mind-bending and when I finally got to my bedroom to see it go back to green was just bananas!