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Learn › Glossary › Luminance

Properties of color

Luminance

How much light a color appears to give off, weighted by how sensitive the eye is to each color.

Also called relative luminance

Luminance measures perceived brightness. Our eyes are most sensitive to green, so a pure green looks much brighter than a pure blue with the same RGB value.

Relative luminance is what WCAG uses to calculate contrast ratios.

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