Color Blindness Simulator
Preview how your design reads for users with protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, and achromatopsia. Research-based simulation, accurate enough for real accessibility checks.
Design tip: if your design uses a red-green palette to encode meaning (good/bad, yes/no), add a shape or icon alongside the color, because deuteranopes see both as similar muddy tones.
What color blindness actually looks like
Color vision deficiency (CVD) isn't "seeing in black and white." It's usually a shift: specific pairs of colors that most people distinguish become indistinguishable. Someone with deuteranopia (the full form of the most common type) doesn't see green as gray; they see it as a muddy brown-olive that overlaps with red. A red stop-sign and a green go-light look subtly different but both land on a yellow-brown axis.
That's why accessibility guidelines (WCAG, ISO 9241-112) insist on "don't use color alone." The information has to survive the color shift. Adding a shape, an icon, a pattern, or a text label turns a design from "works for 92% of viewers" into "works for everyone."
This tool uses research-based colour-blindness simulation, accurate enough for real accessibility checks. For textile designers, pair with our Color Extractor to identify which colors carry the motif, then check whether the motif survives each CVD type here. When you need to tighten the palette, the Color Converter gives you LAB coordinates so you can raise luminance contrast without changing hue, and the Colorway Generator lets you trial CVD-safe variants side-by-side before committing to a print run.
What designers use this simulator for
Audit a dashboard's chart colors
Most dashboards use red / green / yellow for status. That palette is the worst possible choice for deuteranopes, because all three can collapse into the same brown tone. Simulate, check whether your status icons still communicate their state, and add iconography if not.
Verify a textile print reads as intended
A red-floral-on-green-foliage print can lose all of its motif contrast for a deuteranope. Run the print through each CVD type and check whether flowers and leaves remain distinguishable, or if your print collapses into visual mud.
Choose brand colors that work for everyone
If your logo uses two colors, simulate each CVD type to confirm they stay distinguishable. A logo where both colors become identical is unreadable to 8% of the male audience, which is worth knowing before launch.
Evidence for accessibility audits and grants
Government grant applications and WCAG audits often require CVD evidence. Drop your interface, take screenshots of each simulation, paste into your report. Faster than Photoshop filter plugins and more rigorous than eyeballing.
Design warning signs and safety labels
Factory signage, chemical warnings, electrical-panel labels: the entire point is to convey risk instantly. If the color-coded scheme doesn't survive CVD simulation, you're failing your colorblind users. Add icons, text, and shape redundancy.
Teach design teams about accessibility
Show the simulation in a design review. Nothing communicates "this colorway is inaccessible" like watching everyone in the room see the shift live. Every team starts thinking about CVD after one show-and-tell.
What each type means
Green-blind · ~1% of men
Green cones are missing or non-functional. Its milder form, deuteranomaly (~5% of men), is the most common colour deficiency and looks like a weaker version of this. Greens and reds collapse toward a brown-olive axis. Yellows stay distinct.
Red-blind · ~1% of men
Red cones are missing. Similar outcome to deuteranopia but reds look darker overall. A red on black can vanish entirely.
Blue-blind · rare
Blue cones missing. Blues and yellows collapse into pinks / greens. Relatively uncommon: affects under 0.01% of the population.
Full monochromacy
No color vision at all: everything appears in shades of gray. Rare (about 1 in 30,000) but the most aggressive test for whether a design relies on color alone.
Four steps, no signup
Upload your design or pattern
Drop any JPG, PNG, or WEBP up to 10 MB: a textile print, a logo, a website screenshot, a data chart. The simulator handles any image content.
Pick a color-vision type to simulate
Protanopia (red-weak, ~1% of men), deuteranopia (green-weak, ~6% of men), tritanopia (blue-weak, rare), and achromatopsia (full colorblindness). Each transform shows how your design reads for that audience.
Compare side-by-side with the original
A before/after slider lets you drag between the normal-vision image and the simulated version. Spot any elements that lose meaning, contrast, or legibility in the colorblind view.
Download the simulated image
Export a lossless PNG of any simulation for your accessibility report, client deliverable, or redesign reference. No signup, no watermark.
Research-validated, fully free
Research-based colour-blindness simulation, built for accessibility checks.
Research-validated
Based on published vision research. A close estimate of what CVD viewers actually perceive.
All four types, free
Protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, and achromatopsia all available with no signup. Nothing gated behind a paywall.
Private, never uploaded
Nothing is uploaded. Safe for unreleased designs and client work.
Lossless PNG export
Download any simulation as a crisp lossless PNG. Commercial use allowed. Paste directly into accessibility reports or Figma.
Frequently asked
Q.How common is color blindness?
Q.Which type of color blindness should I design for?
Q.How accurate are the simulations?
Q.What should I look for in the simulation?
Q.Is this useful for textile designers?
Q.Is my image private?
Q.Can I use the simulated images in client deliverables?
Q.Does this tool check WCAG contrast ratios?
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