While you may only have a base-level understanding of art and color, you are probably aware of the concept of primary colors. This means that humans have color receptors in their eyes and brain for three core ingredients, red, blue, and green, that allow us to see the visible parts of the EM spectrum. “Light receptors within the eye transmit messages to the brain, which then produces color,” says Scholar Blogs at Emory University.

Magenta is a purplish, reddish, crimson color somewhere between red and blue on the color spectrum, but this particular shade of color actually has no directly corresponding wavelength. It is just “psychologically perceived as a mixture of red and blue,” explains the blog. Simply put – it’s an imaginary color. 

“Our brains turn what should be a linear thing into a circular thing. Technically, the average of red and violet [on opposite sides of the spectrum] should be green, but our brain sees magenta instead,” explains Chemistry Teacher Monica Higgins. In the image above, you see that the color spectrum is linear, but the way we perceive it is actually circular. This optical warping of the linear spectrum is what causes the illusion that is magenta.

Magenta, however, is not the only color that is said to be a neurological illusion or an “intermediary… between two colors.” Here is a link to a website that shows you a few other colors that are ‘imaginary.’