Is LCH an Improvement over RGB? A Comparison of Color Picker Lookup Times, Accuracy, and User Ratings

Color is a highly visual part of user interfaces. The effective use of color can enhance an interface while incorrect use can lead to major accessibility and usability issues. The traditional hardware centric RGB color model is still widely used by many web developers and designers, despite the availability of more human-centric models such as HSL and HSB. Color scientists have for several decades theorized about the benefits of perceptually uniform color spaces. Such models have only just recently been integrated into mainstream web technologies. Yet, few studies have explored the practical benefits of perceptually uniform color spaces such as LCH. This study therefore reports on a controlled study where RGB and LCH were contrasted using a set of color reconstruction tasks. The results show that LCH indeed results in shorter color reconstruction times and higher user ratings than RGB. No notable differences in color reproduction accuracy were observed between the models. The results thus support the claim that LCH should be used instead of RGB. Several remaining open questions regarding the operational benefits of perceptual color spaces are posed.