Why Do Colors Look Different Under Various Types of Lighting?

Colors look different under various lights mainly because of metamerism—a phenomenon where two colors that match under one light source fail to match under another, caused by differences in the spectral composition of light.

Different lighting varies the color perception of objects. Warm light, like that from incandescent bulbs, tends to make colors more yellow, while daylight presents a bluish tint. Our color vision system plays a compensating role using a mechanism called color constancy.

Every light source emits light with a unique "spectral fingerprint" (i.e., the range and intensity of wavelengths it contains). This directly affects how an object’s surface reflects light and how our eyes perceive its color.