30 Struggles Only Colorblind Humans Understand

1. Shopping for clothes. I hate when clothing store tags or website color options either have number codes for color or non-descriptive names for colors. Olive Green on a sweater is great. Pine Tree and I’ll figure it out. Misty Hike and I am lost. Same with 091.

2. I am a colorblind female and picking out makeup, or applying it so that it looks good is next to impossible.

3. Cooking meat! I basically only cook white meat (turkey and chicken) at home because I have no idea how to tell if lamb/beef is cooked enough.

4. Taking care of my plant. One of the ways to inspect your plant’s health is to see the change in the shade of green of the leaves (thanks nature) so I literally have to take pictures every few days and check RGB values using computer software.

5. It’s very difficult (read: impossible) for me to safely do electrical work.

6. Trying to buy bananas… I can never tell which ones are or aren’t ripe.

7. Board games with multiple players. Unless all of the markers are vibrant colors, I have to constantly pay attention to where my marker is. And if that similar color player and I pass on the board, usually have to ask whose is whose.

8. Some album/film art looks awful to me, and sometimes I can’t read the words.

9. When electrical devices are charging and change from red to green when fully charged. I have no idea. Simply making the charging light flash and fully charged light not flash would make life so much easier.

10. Getting emails from colleagues telling me their comments can be found below in red.

11. People will get moody or upset and I will have no idea why. Apparently, they got their hair dyed and was not happy I did not notice.

12. Watching the NBA after they stopped forcing teams to wear white at home. It’s a confusing mess most of the time.

13. Not color blind but my fiancé is, he struggles with the ties on loaves of bread. The color of the tie will blend in with our countertop and I’ll hear him tapping his hand up and down trying to find it so he can close the packaging on the loaf.

14. I can’t read a lot of color-coded charts. For example when they show rain intensity on the radar. If there’s just red, green, and blue I do ok. When they start adding yellow, orange, purple, etc, it just looks like a jumbled mess.

15. I can’t distinguish red text from black text in Excel workbooks. Some people use red to indicate negative numbers. Drives me mad.

16. Mowing the lawn, sometimes I’ll miss a small patch and won’t see it.

17. I find it really difficult to tell the headphones/microphone plugs apart, and keep thinking that my headphones have broken, when in fact, I’ve just plugged them in the wrong holes.

18. You’d be surprised how often color is the only identifier for things. “Can you hand me the red one?” or “Turn left at the brown house.” I’d say little things like that make up the majority of times my colorblindness is a problem.

19. Being unable to see if the lock in a public toilet is red or green. It’s a godsend when toilets are labeled “Vacant” or “Engaged”.

20. Hospitals that have color-coded lines on the floor to get to specific departments are a nightmare.

21. Meeting people and thinking they have grey/white hair when it’s really just blonde. Definitely messes with my sense of people’s ages, especially when masks and/or glasses are added.

22. Getting nauseous when looking at certain websites because of the color contrasts. Literally makes me want to vomit.

23. Sometimes I can’t see dog shit in grass. There are plenty of times when I’ve had a shitty time.

24. Bic pens. Red and Green. I can see the caps perfectly and they’re super different for me, but once you draw a line on each of them, wtf… they look the same!

25. So not colorblind, but my dad is. I can’t tell you how many times he would bring home a diet version of some pop because they looked the same to him.

26. I am a very thorough wiper when I defecate and also I ride a bicycle for a living. Sometimes when I wipe it turns to blood and I think I’m still wiping poop but really I’m just incessantly wiping blood out of my ass.

27. Red-green blindness here! Can’t do a lot of jobs due to this. Like pilot, train conductor, operating certain machinery, etc. The list is quite long and frustrating if you have to turn down great job offers because you know you won’t make it through the medical exam.

28. Being able to spot the little medians in parking lots at the end of rows. If there’s no yellow paint on the ends, it just blends in with the rest of the grey pavement, making it virtually invisible. This is especially hard at night.

29. People who don’t believe me and try to test me by asking me what color something is. It was funny the first time it happened in second grade. It’s not really funny thirty years later.

30. Obligatory I’m not colorblind but my uncle is. He has previously said that at intersections with a single traffic light (so NOT the red/yellow/green kind) he has a hard time trying to figure out if it’s a flashing red or a flashing yellow.