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Back in the 1950s, when color TV was invented, everything was simple. TVs were either color or black-and-white, and you could tell at a glance which was which. Today, you can find TVs and monitors that somehow promise more colors, but what does that mean? And why do manufacturers use confusing jargon like color spaces and color gamuts to explain it? Let’s break it down.
Most likely, you've seen the terms “color space” or “color gamut” while shopping for a high-dynamic-range TV, but you’ll also see them pop up around certain computer monitors, especially ones designed for gaming. Sometimes a manufacturer will say that a display covers some percentage of a particular color space, like DCI-P3 or Rec. 2020.
If none of these words mean anything to you, then it’s probably fine if you ignore them. All most people really need to know is whether their display supports HDR—a significant upgrade to color displays that can produce over a billion colors in bright, vivid detail. But if you do a lot of media editing, or you care about getting the most accurate color reproduction you can, here’s how to interpret all the jargon.
What Is a Color Gamut?
As you might recall from middle school science class, color is simply how our squishy human eyes perceive different wavelengths of light. The spectrum of wavelengths that we can see is only a small subset of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. So, a color display will show all the colors that a human eye can see. Right?
Well, not exactly. In fact, every display you’ve ever seen only shows a small portion of the colors that your eyes are capable of perceiving. That portion is what’s referred to as a “color gamut.” A color gamut refers to the range of colors within the visible light spectrum that the display is capable of reproducing.
It might not seem like there are colors missing from your display, because you see approximations of most colors, but there are certain colors that simply can’t be shown. For a simple comparison, SDR (standard dynamic range) TVs are capable of displaying over 16.7 million colors—more specifically, there are 16.7 million unique combinations of the 256 different levels of red, green, and blue that the display can produce.
An HDR TV, on the other hand, is capable of at least 1,024 different levels of red, green, and blue each, for over 1.07 billion unique color combinations. This dramatically expands how much of the visible spectrum that displays can reproduce. But it also means that all the content that you see on your display—every show, movie, or video game—has to be created with those new color options in mind.
What Is a Color Space?
The term “color space” refers to not only a range of colors, but a specific way of organizing colors in a way that device manufacturers can refer to and support. For example, the sRGB color space is used to specify the 16.7 million colors that most SDR monitors and TVs have been producing for years.
Most of these color spaces are defined in part by their relation to the CIE 1931 color space, which quantifies all of the colors that are visible to the human eye. The plethora of other color spaces out there define a subset of these colors, with some used to define colors for purposes like printing. When shopping for a monitor or TV, there are a few key ones worth keeping your eye out for:
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone AshworthGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullsRGB/Rec. 709: sRGB is the color space you’re probably most familiar with. Based on the Rec. 709 standard, sRGB has been the default for most web content for years. It’s also relatively small, and only covers about 35.9 percent of visible colors (as defined by the CIE 1931 standard).DCI-P3: This is the second color space you’re most likely to encounter. It was first developed for movie theater projection systems, but it has quickly become an upgraded standard over sRGB. DCI-P3 covers more colors than sRGB, with much finer variation of the shades of colors within it. It covers around 53.6 percent of the CIE 1931 space.Rec. 2020: The Rec. 2020 spec is an upgrade over Rec. 709, and like its predecessor, it includes its own corresponding color space, though you’ll more often see “Rec. 2020” used as a shorthand for the color space itself. It covers 75.8 percent of CIE 1931, making it one of the most robust color spaces you’re likely to encounter. It’s also overkill for most needs. High-end TVs sometimes cover most or all of the Rec. 2020 color space, but unless you need to do professional color grading or design work, you probably don’t need to seek this out for your monitor needs.
These color spaces are used as a reference point by everyone from display manufacturers to filmmakers and content creators designing their content to be seen on them.
What Does a Percentage of a Color Space Mean?
So, if a color gamut refers to the range of colors that a display can reproduce, and a color space is a standard that defines exactly how those colors are reproduced … why do so many monitors and TVs say they cover things like “97 percent of DCI-P3” or “125 percent of sRGB”? This is because the colors a display is capable of reproducing isn’t as strict as color space definitions.
You can think of it a bit like a Venn diagram. The color gamut that an individual display is capable of reproducing is one circle (or triangle, in this case), and the color space definition is the other. Intuitively, you would think that the percentage number listed on display specifications would refer to how much the two overlap—so, “99 percent of DCI-P3” would mean that a display is capable of showing 99 percent of the colors that DCI-P3 defines.
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Most of the time that is the case, but sometimes—especially when you see a percentage over 100—manufacturers will instead use this number to refer to how much bigger the display’s color gamut is compared to a color space, not how much it overlaps with it. So, for example, if a display advertises “125 percent sRGB,” that usually means the color gamut has an area that’s 25 percent larger than sRGB, but it might not perfectly encompass every color within sRGB.
In the above image, for example, you can see the results of a measurement I took (using a Spyder X2 Ultra) of the monitor I used while writing this piece. The AdobeRGB color space has a lot more color coverage in the greens and blues, while this display can cover more reds, oranges, and yellows.
This tool (correctly) defines the amount of overlap as 88 percent. However, the overall size of this monitor’s color gamut is about the same, if not a little bigger, than AdobeRGB. It wouldn’t exactly be dishonest to say this display’s color gamut is some percent larger than AdobeRGB, but it can give the misleading impression that it covers every color within AdobeRGB and then some.
For most people, this won’t really be a concern, but it is something to pay attention to if you do professional media work. If this is something that concerns you, then keep an eye out for the phrase “color coverage.” This term refers specifically to how much of a color space a display’s gamut covers, and avoids any ambiguity. If all else fails, watch for specifications that stop at 100 percent.
If you’re not doing professional work and just want a nice display, then you probably don’t need to care about most of this. In general, anything that gets within 95 percent of DCI-P3 is going to be great—or at least sufficient that you can pick a monitor based on other factors. We also put all the monitors we test through plenty of testing ourselves, so if you don’t want to try to decipher all of this and would rather get straight to finding a great display, check out our Best Computer Monitors guide.
What Else Affects How Colors Look?
Color gamuts and color spaces are a highly technical aspect of how your TV, monitor, or any other display shows images. If you're a media professional, you probably need to learn about all this. But what if you just want a nice-looking TV in your living room? If that's the case, there are other specs you can look to that will be more relevant for your needs. For example:
Peak brightness: How bright your display gets will affect how much it can compete with the ambient light in your room. (Notably, color gamut tests have to be done in a dark room for just this reason!) For TVs, you'll generally want something that can reach at least 800 nits for HDR content, while monitors can get by with closer to 500-600—though some high-end monitors are getting even brighter than that.High Dynamic Range (or HDR): Most displays for years used SDR, which was capable of producing around 16.7 million colors, but HDR can pull off over a billion. It leads to richer, more vivid images, plus more striking contrasts between light and dark areas of an image. The most common types of HDR are HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision, with the latter being the best of these.Contrast ratio: The difference between how bright and how dark a display can get is referred to as the contrast ratio, and it's a big deal when it comes to picture quality. A dark, starry night scene doesn't look as vivid if the “black” parts of the display are actually a light gray. Some panel types—like OLED displays—are better at getting darker blacks, which can make all the difference in the world to your viewing experience.
