40-Cap Hue Arrangement Practice
Arrange 40 digital colour caps in a smooth hue gradient between two fixed endpoints. Your arrangement creates an error plot for practice and self-exploration; it is not the standardised FM 100 Hue test.
Tips: Take your time — accuracy matters more than speed. Set screen brightness to full and disable Night Mode. Use a desktop or laptop for the best drag-and-drop experience.
Before You Start
Prepare Your Screen
Hue Order Screen is an educational, screen-based activity. The result can be affected by your display, lighting, and colour settings.
- Set brightness to at least 75% and avoid strong glare on the screen.
- Turn off Night Shift, blue-light filters, colour filters, and adaptive display modes.
- Use a tablet, laptop, or desktop if possible. Do not use this result for work, licensing, or medical decisions.
About this hue-arrangement practice
Hue-arrangement activities explore how accurately someone can place colours in a gradual sequence. The clinical Farnsworth–Munsell 100 Hue test is a more extensive standardised assessment with 85 caps across four trays, administered under controlled daylight conditions.
This browser-based activity is for practice only. Display calibration, lighting, browser colour management, visual acuity, and how the task is completed can all affect results, so an online score cannot be treated as a clinical result or used for occupational decisions.
Read the Test Methodology. Reference: National Academies: Tests of Visual Functions.
Ordering hues instead of naming figures
Hue arrangement is a common format in colour-vision assessment, and it works on a different principle from digit plates. Instead of hiding a figure, an arrangement task presents a series of colours and asks the participant to place them in a gradual sequence.
Dean Farnsworth developed clinical hue-order methods in the 1940s. In a controlled test, the pattern and size of ordering errors can help a trained professional assess colour discrimination. Standardised caps, illumination, administration, scoring, and clinical interpretation all matter to that use.
ColorVision’s 40-cap activity borrows only the general idea of placing nearby colours in order. Its digital colours, number of caps, interface, and scoring are original. It is not the standardised Farnsworth–Munsell 100 Hue Test, and its output cannot identify which cone class is involved.
Reading the error plot
The plot is a circle. Each position around it corresponds to a hue, in the same order as the caps. After you finish, each cap is compared with where it should have been, and the size of the discrepancy is drawn outward from the centre.
A small, even scatter. The submitted order stayed relatively close to this activity’s reference sequence across the circle.
A pronounced line across the plot. Larger ordering differences occurred in two opposite regions of this activity’s colour sequence. The orientation label is geometric, not a diagnosis or subtype classification.
A large, unpatterned scatter. The submitted order differed in several parts of the sequence. The activity cannot determine whether that came from the display, lighting, attention, drag-and-drop handling, or colour perception.
A blue-yellow-oriented plot. Some of the larger differences occurred in the portion of the activity labelled blue-yellow. This does not establish a tritan pattern. New or changing colour perception is a reason to seek professional advice regardless of this plot.
What this version can and cannot support
The activity here is an original hue-arrangement implementation inspired by the published method. It runs entirely in your browser, and that imposes real limits.
The most important is gamut and calibration. The clinical version uses physical caps of controlled pigment, viewed under a standardised illuminant. On a display, every cap colour is synthesised by your panel, and panels differ substantially in how they render fine hue steps — particularly in the blue-green and violet regions where the steps are already subtle. Two people with identical colour vision can produce different error plots on different monitors.
Interaction adds a second limit. Dragging caps with a mouse or a finger is not the same motor task as physically arranging caps on a tray, and ordering errors caused by imprecise dragging are indistinguishable from ordering errors caused by perception.
Finally, the total error score produced here is not comparable to a published clinical score. Treat it as a within-test measure: useful for comparing your own attempts on the same display, not for placing yourself on a clinical scale.
Getting a usable result
Give yourself several uninterrupted minutes, set brightness high, turn off adaptive colour features, and work in even, neutral room lighting away from window glare. Wear your usual correction and do not rush. These steps reduce avoidable variation, but they do not turn a browser activity into a clinical test.
If you want a shorter task, the 15-cap arrangement screen uses a similar hue-order format with fewer caps. The digit plate screen explores a different format by asking you to identify figures within coloured dots. Both provide educational feedback only.
For background on why compression happens at the cone level, see what colour blindness is and types of colour blindness. Our test methodology documents how these activities were constructed.
Got Questions?
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about colour blindness tests, how they work, and what to do with your results.
Why is arranging colours harder than reading a plate?
The tasks ask different questions. A digit plate asks whether a figure stands out from its background, while a hue-order activity asks you to rank many small colour differences. Attention, input accuracy, lighting, and the display can all affect the order you submit.
What does the error plot actually show?
The plot visualises how this submitted sequence differs from the activity's reference order. Longer marks represent larger ordering differences. It is descriptive feedback for this activity, not evidence of a diagnosis.
My errors form a line across the plot. Which axis is which?
The activity can label a plot as red-green-oriented, blue-yellow-oriented, or mixed based on its geometry. Those labels describe the drawing only. This original browser activity has not been validated to identify protan, deutan, tritan, inherited, or acquired conditions.
Is a high error score bad?
It means the submitted order differed more from this activity's reference sequence. It cannot explain why. Fatigue, lighting, screen rendering, input mistakes, and colour perception may all affect the score.
Can this detect blue-yellow deficiency when plates cannot?
No diagnostic claim should be made from this browser activity. It includes colours from around the hue circle, but its plot cannot confirm a blue-yellow deficiency. A new or changing colour-vision concern should be assessed by an eye-care professional.
Why do my results vary between attempts?
Small colour steps can render differently as screen settings and lighting change. Attention, fatigue, and drag-and-drop accuracy also vary. Do not interpret repeat attempts as clinical measurements.
Should I use this instead of the digit plate screen?
Use either as an educational activity, depending on whether you prefer identifying figures or arranging hues. Neither browser activity can establish whether a colour-vision deficiency exists or classify its type.
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