Monitor color test
A calibration check you can do by eye: colour bars, saturation ramps, skin tones and a neutral grey ramp, with a six-step checklist that remembers your progress on this device.
Colour bars (75%)
Saturation ramps
Neutral grey ramp
Skin tones
Six-step calibration check
Let the monitor run 20–30 minutes. Reset the picture settings, pick the sRGB or Standard mode, and turn off dynamic contrast, eco modes and "vivid" presets.
About 120 cd/m² is a common target for an office; many monitors reach that around 25–40% brightness. White shouldn't glare at you.
Use the black level test: the first few near-black steps should be just visible and the near-white steps should stay separate.
Use the gamma test and pick the monitor gamma setting that blends at 2.2.
Choose the colour temperature closest to 6500 K (often "Warm" or "6500K"). The grey ramp below should look neutral, with no pink or green tint.
Look at the bars, ramps and skin tones below. Ramps should be smooth, skin tones natural, and no hue should look neon or dull compared with the others.
The limits of checking by eye. Your eyes adapt to the white in front of you within minutes, so a monitor that is slightly blue will soon look "white". This page can catch obvious problems and get settings close; it can't give you a measured Delta E. For colour-critical work, use a colorimeter and its software. What you see here also passes through your OS colour profile (ICC profile on Windows, ColorSync on macOS), so a wrong profile shows up as wrong colours here too.
More checks: gamma, black level, banding, and wide gamut.
Questions people ask
Can I calibrate my monitor online?
You can check and adjust it by eye: brightness, contrast, gamma and obvious tints. True calibration, meaning measured colour accuracy and a correction profile, needs a hardware colorimeter such as those from Calibrite or Datacolor, because eyes adapt to whatever white they see.
Why do colours look different on my phone and monitor?
Different panels have different gamuts, white points and factory settings, and phones often apply vivid modes or adapt to room light (True Tone, Adaptive colour). Compare with those features off, and remember that each device is also filtered by its own OS colour management.
What is a good white point?
The standard for web and most content is D65, about 6500 K, a neutral daylight white. Monitor presets labelled "Warm" are often close to it; "Cool" or "Normal" is often bluer.
Does this page show accurate colours?
The page sends exact sRGB values. What you see then depends on your browser's colour management, your OS display profile and your monitor settings, which is exactly what you are checking.