What colour is a mirror?

Andrew420 · 1189299. Sun Apr 24, 2016 6:17 pm

I've just recently discovered Qi and have been binge-watching it with my better half for the last few weeks and I must say that this show is easily as good as TopGear was with hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

One of the trivial items we saw on Qi was the question "What colour is a mirror?"

While it appears that the answer is "Green", as described on Qi, this is actually not the case.

In my career as a fine artist, I have worked mostly with glass mirror plate.

In short; regular glass is green, just look at it sideways and you'll see.

Unless it's crystal glass.

Crystal isn't green, it's clear, and if you adhere a mirror coat to the one side you don't see that green hue that you see in a house of (typical) mirrors or in a room with a bunch of clear glass pannels in it.

Also, mirror plate which has been produced using stainless steel or polished aluminum doesn't produce a green hue either.

"Mirror" doesn't denote any one colour in the spectrum, it is reflective of all colour and therefore it is "prismatic".

I hope this helps to clear things up ;)

Cheers!

Jenny · 1189368. Mon Apr 25, 2016 11:34 am

Hi Andrew and welcome to the forums :-)

Nice quibble - I like it.