NEED TO KNOW
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Not long ago, Kristin Hughes bought a new chair for her home in Santa Monica, Calif.
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She decided to sell her extra piece — a blue armchair — on Facebook Marketplace
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Hughes listed it plainly as a “blue armchair,” but for two-and-a-half months, there were no takers. Finally, a potential buyer reached out
One girl’s furniture color is dividing the Internet.
Not long ago, Kristin Hughes bought a new chair for her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She decided to sell her extra piece — a blue armchair — on Facebook Marketplace.
She listed it plainly as a “blue armchair,” but for two-and-a-half months, there were no takers. Finally, a potential buyer reached out. The woman asked Hughes to message her directly, so she did.
“Hi, this is Kristin. Just wanted to touch base about the blue chair,” Hughes, 32, recalls writing. But the buyer’s reply stopped her in her tracks: “It’s grey,” the woman wrote.
“At that moment, I was confused,” Hughes tells PEOPLE. “I honestly thought maybe she was looking at a different chair. So I replied, ‘It’s blue.’ ”
And just like that, a full-on color debate began.
The buyer pushed back again: “Are you sure it’s blue? It looks gray to me. Can you take it in different lighting?”
Trying to be helpful, Hughes obliged. She took a photo in new lighting and sent it along — but the buyer stood her ground. Still gray.
Determined to end the confusion, Hughes went to great lengths. She rearranged her living room, placed the chair beside her undeniably blue couch, opened every blind, turned on every light and took another photo.
“I did all of that, and in the moment I was just like, ‘Am I crazy? Why am I rearranging my entire living room to prove this?’ ” she says. “The chair is blue.”
Still baffled, Hughes decided to take the story to TikTok. She’d been posting on the platform for four years, typically getting 10 to 20 likes on a video. She expected this one to be no different.
Kristin Hughes
Kristin Hughes posing with the chair
“I thought maybe my five close friends who always comment would see it,” she says. But within an hour, the post had 200 comments and the debate was far from settled.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ ” she recalls. “I was shocked at the number of comments — but even more shocked that people were overwhelmingly saying the chair was gray. It had never crossed my mind that it wasn’t blue.”
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From there, the post exploded. The video racked up more than 22 million views and 136,000 comments, launching a viral color controversy that rivaled the infamous “dress” debate of 2015.
“It’s not only gray, it’s very freaking gray. 😂,” one person commented.
“That is the grayest gray I’ve seen,” another person wrote.
Someone else replied, “Wait, was I just gaslit into expecting even a somewhat blue chair only to see it’s without a doubt gray?”
“I hadn’t seen a single person say it was blue,” Hughes says. “I really did start spiraling. I was like, ‘What are they talking about?’ That’s what sparked the follow-up videos. People were giving me suggestions like, ‘Take the photo with blue and gray items next to it,’ or ‘Try different lighting or phone cameras.’ I didn’t expect people to keep disagreeing with me.”
Kristin Hughes
Kristin Hughes on the couch
Despite the online chaos, Hughes has tried to keep her sense of humor.
“I’ve accepted the fact that apparently it’s not blue,” she says, laughing. “But my eyes are still seeing what my eyes see. I think some people imagine I meant bright royal blue or something super vivid. It’s never been that. To me, it’s always been a very dark blue — the chair and the couch both.”
Since then, the experience has caused her to second-guess almost everything around her. When she’s walking, she’ll pass cars or see delivery trucks and think, ” ‘Wait, is that blue or is that gray?’ “
“The other day an Amazon truck went by, and I was like … I genuinely don’t know anymore,” she says.
The overwhelming response online also led many commenters to suggest she take a color vision test. In a recent TikTok livestream, Hughes even took the EnChroma color blindness test live.
During the Protan portion of the test, she was shocked to find out that she got some of the questions wrong.
Right away, she called her mom and close friends, asking, ” ‘Are these hard to see for you guys?’ “
“And everyone was like, ‘No … they’re super clear,’ ” Hughes recalls them responding. “So then I thought, wait — am I farther on the spectrum than I thought? Can I really not see these shades?”
“So I took it again, off-camera, just to double-check — and got the exact same result,” she adds. “I don’t know if that’s definitive, but it sure feels like the proof is in the pudding. Still, I’m waiting to get an official diagnosis from an eye doctor before I say for sure.”
Kristin Hughes
Kristin Hughes sitting in the chair
Conveniently, help is already on the way. A friend of hers shared the viral video with his wife — who happens to be an eye doctor in Los Angeles.
Hughes says the doctor has been following the story and thought it was hilarious, She reached out and offered to get her in for an appointment.
She adds: “I guess I’m still in the denial phase. I keep thinking, there has to be another explanation. Maybe it’s my phone screen. Maybe it’s lighting. Maybe something else is going on. But it’s making me laugh at this point.”
With an appointment on the horizon, Hughes is considering letting her followers tag along.
“If I can share a little of the process, I’d love to — people seem really invested in this journey,” she says. “It’s wild, but kind of fun.”
As for the chair?
“I guess I need to finally get rid of this ‘gray’ chair,” Hughes says. “Even though to me, it’s still blue. Maybe dark blue. But definitely not gray … at least not in my eyes.”
Read the original article on People
