Best colours for visibility at sea

Back in the day, you could have any color Ford motor carriage you wanted as long as you wanted black. (The only color it came in.) Ordinary everyday people who don't want to be flashy, and say "Look at my car, see it's pretty colored..." want something they can kind of blend into traffic with in case there are law enforcement watching or something. (I just made that last part up.. LOL!)

 

I hope this is visible enough.

 

We did, at least in the U.S., in the late 60's/early 70's. Musclecars were popular then, and the mfrs. gave them bright paint schemes to help sell to the young folks. Especially with Chrysler, with names like Hemi Orange, Go Mango, Super Bee, SubLime, etc.

Color seems to be a real fad among automobiles - really depends on what the public is willing to buy. Especially something that is mass-produced, whereas boats are generally low-volume, and the lower the volume, the more customization you can do with paint schemes, etc. but at a higher price. When I bought my car, silver was the "in" color, although that is not why I bought the silver one (it hides dirt the best!). Burnt Orange was a popular color last year and Ford had an "electric blue", while the resurgence of the "musclecar" brought back some of the bright colors (possibly signaling a return to more unusual colors), but this year I'm seeing more dark blues and other staid colors. I think conservative colors for conservative times. No one wants to be seen as flashy when 95% of the population is living on hard times and complaining about people who have made a little better life for themselves.

 

I guess taxis are yellow for a reason??

Richard Woods

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t8KCzTHAOVc/TibNjoYcaXI/AAAAAAAAB0Q/jTi4pb5N6Ok/s1600/noddy.jpg

 

There's some difference seeing a boat on the horizon (most of us have no problem seeing it 100m away) or a car in the trafic where you gotto watch from a couple of meters to 100m max in most circumstances.. (not here thou but that's another story..)
On the other hand turning your boat into an ad is another matter.. maybe some artist could do the job best me thinks

 

I'm an artist. This one is not high visibility, and not finished since it has problems that need to be worked out and I started over. The top of the cabin will eventually be white. I want to put radical new designs on boats, and maybe I will make some of them high visibility instead of a 'razzle dazzle' camo pattern.



Or maybe this one would be more like high visibility? It is not normal coloring by any means and is bright. Yeah, it is blue, but it is really bright blue I thought about adding uv reactive paint to.



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I think I like this one the best though.



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That is pretty close to the color of the sea in shallow water over sand bottom. I wouldn't count that as high visibility in that environment.

 

Well, maybe I could hide in the shallows with her. LOL! I've had stalkers before, so maybe it would help hide from them. I hid underneath a SUV for half an hour one time before she finally gave up and left.

 

It's a good thing the lot wasn't full of Mini Coopers.

 

LOL! I know, right?

I have been thinking a lot about this. Orange could even be hidden if the conditions were right in the morning or evening and the clouds on the horizon were orange. I am starting to think maybe black and yellow stripes, or even checkers like the old WWII aircraft aces used for intimidation saying "Come and try to get me, RIGHT HERE, so I can shoot you full of holes!" Even the Germans did this. For some reason though, the Japanese didn't seem to. Maybe they didn't have the freedom to paint their own planes like our generals did?

 

Sorry for jumping in late here guys, but you are missing an important aspect; the spectral sensitivity of the human eye. In daylight, its maximum sensitivity is centered around a wavelength of ~5600 Angstrom, which is a yellow/green nuance. Distribution is close to a normal statistic. At 6000 Angstrom (corresponding to "orange"), the sensitivity is only 60 % of max Y/G value. The yellow we use for tank models is not too distant from this, and it gives a good contrast to the water and general illumination in the tank environment.

However, with a human eye fully accommodated for night vision, the sensibility curve is moved to longer wavelengths. Now the maximum sensitivity is centering at a wavelength of 5100 Angstrom, corresponding to a green/blue tone. At night, we have only about 2% sensibility left in the orange wavelength. The colour that is optimum for both situations would be in the wavelength of roughly 5300 Angstom, i.e. a light green with a touch of blue.

So far the colors as such, to this we must add the contrast issue. Here black is the natural choice. It should be applied at the boundaries between the signal color field and the surrounding environment. This is what you will find in modern protective clothing for working in bad light conditions, like road workers. It also explains why there are often two sets of coloring, one is for daylight and one is for night. Problem here is: what is the spectral distribution of the lamps that may be used? The LED lamps coming up now, for instance have a completely different distribution than halogen or glow bulbs.

 

The nail that sticks up gets hammered down - Japanese proverb.

 

And yet, most all emergency gear remains orange. Maybe it has something to do with how our brains "sense" the color - i.e., in nature, yellow is calming, but orange/red means "look at me, danger, be alert!".

With the multitude of light colors associated with the up & coming LED lighting phenomena, this blue-green sensitivity is well-known among lighting enthusiasts. Some mfrs. were using this tint to get maximum luminescence out of low-power LEDs. As a side-note, while many LED enthusiasts prefer the cooler white light (5-7000 K)for maximum brightness with proper color rendition, there are a growing number of enthusiasts preferring the warmer tints around 4000 K, similar to brighter incandescents, even with the disadvantage of less light per watt used. But I'm getting off-topic...

Again, blue/green is easy to do with the LEDs, so that would seem to be an advantage for being lit up at night; however, given color rendition at these different tints, green shows up best under green light... so maybe have some whitish green areas in the boat, illuminated with green LED lighting, if you want to be seen at night...

 

So, again, it boils down to the application, circumstance, situation and when high visibility is needed.

-Tom