Designing for Deuteranopia

When Sarah, a talented graphic designer, discovered she had been unknowingly creating designs that excluded millions of users, it changed her entire approach to color. Like many designers, she had never considered how her carefully chosen green and red color schemes appeared to people with deuteranopia—the most common form of color blindness affecting green color perception.

Understanding Deuteranopia

Contrary to popular belief, more than 99% of people with color blindness actually see color, just not exactly like everyone else. Deuteranopia is far more complex than simply not seeing green. People with this condition experience a shifted color spectrum where certain greens appear as browns or yellows, and distinguishing between red and green becomes challenging or impossible.

What makes deuteranopia particularly challenging for designers is that the affected colors—reds and greens—are frequently used in digital interfaces for critical functions like error messages, success notifications, and call-to-action buttons. When these colors become indistinguishable, users can miss essential information or become confused about interface functionality.

The Impact on User Experience

Consider common scenarios where deuteranopia creates barriers: a user trying to complete an online form might not notice required field indicators if they're only marked in red, or they might struggle to interpret data visualizations where different data sets are represented in various shades of red and green. In e-commerce, they might have difficulty distinguishing between "in stock" and "out of stock" indicators, potentially leading to frustration and abandoned purchases.

Practical Design Strategies

Choose Deuteranopia-Friendly Color Palettes

Excellent color choices include blues and oranges, which create strong contrast and remain clearly distinguishable. Purple and yellow combinations also work well. When you must use reds and greens, ensure they differ significantly in brightness and saturation.

Implement Multiple Visual Cues

Never rely solely on color to convey important information. Supplement color with additional visual indicators like icons, patterns, typography changes, or positioning. For form validation, instead of only highlighting errors in red, add error icons and descriptive text.

Test with Deuteranopia Simulation Tools

Regular testing with color blindness simulation tools should be part of your design workflow. Tools like Stark for Figma and Sketch, Color Oracle, or online simulators like Coblis allow you to see your designs through the lens of deuteranopia.

Designing Effective Data Visualizations

Data visualization presents unique challenges. Traditional red-green color scales in heat maps or charts become meaningless. Instead, use sequential color scales that progress from light to dark within a single hue, or choose diverging scales that use blue and orange. For line charts, vary line styles (solid, dashed, dotted) alongside color differences.

Building Inclusive Design Systems

Integrate deuteranopia considerations into your design system from the ground up. Document approved color combinations that work for all users. Create component libraries that build accessibility into interface elements by default, like form components with multiple validation cues.

Moving Beyond Compliance

Designing for deuteranopia shouldn't be viewed as a constraint but as an opportunity to create more effective visual communication. When you design inclusively from the start, you often discover solutions that work better for everyone. Clear visual hierarchies and strong contrast create robust designs that perform well across diverse conditions and user needs.