Everything looks slightly green, or washed out, or the blacks are grey and the whites are dull. Monitor colour problems have a small number of causes and one of them, an HDMI range mismatch, accounts for a surprising share of complaints about a monitor looking worse than it should.
The short answer
Check the HDMI colour range setting on both the graphics driver and the monitor. If one is set to limited and the other to full, blacks look grey and the whole image looks washed out. Setting both to full, or both to limited, fixes it instantly and is the most common cause of a monitor that looks flat.
The range mismatch explained
Video signals can use the full range of brightness values from 0 to 255, or a limited range from 16 to 235 that exists for historical television reasons. Computers normally use full range; televisions normally use limited.
If your graphics card sends full range and the display expects limited, the extremes get clipped and you lose detail in the darkest and brightest areas. If it sends limited and the display expects full, blacks become grey and whites become dull, and the whole image looks washed out and low contrast.
This happens most often when a monitor is connected by HDMI rather than DisplayPort, because graphics drivers frequently assume an HDMI display is a television and default to limited range. It is a two-click fix and people live with it for years.
Set the colour range consistently
In your graphics driver control panel, find the output colour range or dynamic range setting and set it to full. Then check the monitor’s own menu for an HDMI range or black level setting and set it to match. Both ends must agree.
Check the monitor's picture mode
Monitors ship in a vivid or dynamic mode that oversaturates everything. Switch to standard, sRGB or a mode described as accurate. If the image looks duller, that is what accurate looks like after weeks of oversaturation.
Turn off any blue light or night mode
Both the operating system and the monitor may have one, and they can be on schedules you forgot about. A screen that turns orange every evening is this, not a fault.
Check the colour profile in the operating system
In Windows colour management, check which profile is assigned to the display. A profile left behind by previous software, or the wrong one for your monitor, tints everything. Setting it back to the system default is a reliable test.
Reset the monitor to factory settings
If someone has adjusted individual red, green and blue levels, working out which is wrong is harder than starting over. The reset is in the monitor’s own menu.
Check the cable and the port
A damaged cable can cause a colour cast, typically a pink or green tint, by losing one signal pair. Swap the cable, and try DisplayPort instead of HDMI if both are available, since DisplayPort avoids the range confusion entirely.
Check the colour depth and format setting
In the graphics driver, confirm the output format is RGB rather than a chroma-subsampled mode, and that the bit depth is 8 or higher. Subsampled output makes text look fringed and colours look slightly off.
Calibrate, at least roughly
Use a test image with a greyscale ramp and adjust brightness and contrast so you can distinguish the darkest and lightest steps. A hardware calibrator is better, but this free approach fixes most of what is wrong.
A quick way to spot a range mismatch: display a full black image and look at the screen edges in a dark room. If the black looks grey rather than black, and brightness is not unusually high, the range is mismatched. Switching the setting produces an immediate and obvious improvement.
Other causes worth knowing
- Two monitors that do not match. Different panels genuinely differ, and no amount of adjustment makes two different models identical. Getting them close is realistic; matching them exactly is not.
- A yellow or orange cast that changes through the day. A night mode on a schedule.
- A pink or green tint. Usually a cable or connector fault losing one colour channel.
- Colours shifting as you move your head. A limitation of the panel type rather than a fault. Some panels have narrow viewing angles.
- Everything too saturated. A vivid picture mode, or a wide-gamut monitor displaying standard content without proper colour management.
- Text with coloured fringes. Chroma subsampling, or the subpixel rendering setting.
If you do any colour-critical work, be aware that no amount of eyeballing substitutes for a hardware calibrator. They are inexpensive to borrow or buy, and for photography or print work the difference between a calibrated and an uncalibrated monitor is the difference between prints that match the screen and prints that do not.
Wide-gamut monitors and oversaturation
A monitor that covers a wider colour range than standard content expects will oversaturate everything unless the software manages it. Reds glow, skin tones look sunburnt, and the effect is most obvious in a browser.
The fix is to use the monitor’s sRGB mode for everyday use, which constrains it to the standard range. Switch to the wide mode only for content that is actually authored for it. Many people buy a wide-gamut monitor, never touch this setting, and conclude the colours are simply wrong.
Why does my monitor look washed out over HDMI?
A colour range mismatch. The graphics driver is sending limited range while the monitor expects full, which makes blacks grey. Set both ends to the same setting.
Why do my two monitors look different?
Different panels differ genuinely, and one may be in a different picture mode or have a different colour profile assigned. You can get them close; identical is not realistic between different models.
What causes a pink or green tint?
Usually a cable or connector fault losing one colour channel. Swap the cable before adjusting any settings.
Should I use full or limited colour range?
Full for a computer monitor. Limited is a television convention. The important thing is that both the graphics card and the display are set the same.
Do I need a hardware calibrator?
For colour-critical work, yes. For general use, setting the range correctly, using sRGB mode and a rough greyscale adjustment gets you most of the way for nothing.
The bottom line
Check the colour range on both the graphics driver and the monitor, because a mismatch is the most common cause of a display that looks washed out and it takes two clicks to fix. Then set the picture mode to standard or sRGB rather than vivid, and check no stray colour profile is assigned. A pink or green cast means the cable, not the settings.
