Does Nothing Look Like Black? Your Questions, Answered

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Explore nothingness from the POV of the blind, outer space, and philosophy

Co-authored by Dan Hickey

Last Updated: August 3, 2026 Fact Checked

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Is nothing black?

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What do blind people see?

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Visualizing Nothing

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Nothing in Space

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Nothing in Philosophy

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Seeing “nothing” is quite the paradox, since “nothing” looks like the complete lack of visual stimuli—no objects, no light, no form, no anything (not even darkness). Just, nothingness. It’s hard to describe and to wrap your head around if you’re used to having vision, but for many blind people, seeing nothing is the norm. In this article, we’ll come as close as we can to sharing what nothing looks like and how you can try to approximate it with optical tricks. We’ll also explore how nothingness is perceived by the blind, as well as how cosmologists and philosophers approach the concept of nothingness (if it really exists).

Can you see nothing?

You can’t see “nothing” because nothing is the absence of visual stimuli. Blackness isn’t nothing since you’re seeing the color black, which is a thing. Most blind people don’t perceive darkness or black, as they have no visual input. To approximate “nothingness,” try to “see” with a body part besides your eyes.

Section 1 of 5:

What would it look like to see nothing?

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Nothing looks like the complete absence of all visual stimuli, including blackness. We’re sorry we can’t give you a more specific description, but describing nothingness is pretty complex! Many people assume nothingness looks like black or darkness (like when you close your eyes), but that’s not quite right. Black is just the absence of light, which gets processed in your brain and interpreted as darkness or the color black.^{[1]
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Research source} Since you are perceiving darkness, and darkness is a thing, that means you’re seeing something (and not nothing).^{[2]
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- Instead, true nothing looks like a complete lack of perceiving anything, including darkness.
- One popular description of seeing nothingness has you try to “see” out of your elbow. You’ll notice that your brain gets zero visual stimuli from your elbow—that’s what it’s like to “see” nothing.
- Does nothingness have a color? No. Color is perceived when light bounces off of an object, enters our eyes, and gets processed as a color in our brains based on its wavelengths.^{[3]
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  Trustworthy Source
  
  American Academy of Opthamologists
  Professional medical organization focused on advocating for public health and supporting sight-related research
  
  Go to source} In nothingness, there are no objects or light to perceive and interact with, so color cannot exist—not even black.

Section 2 of 5:

Do blind people see black?

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Many blind people do not see black, and instead perceive nothing. If a person is born blind, they have no concept of what colors are, including black, so they can’t perceive blackness or darkness at all. Instead, they have a complete lack of visual sense.^{[4]
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Research source} Here is how some blind people have described what they see online:
- In this TikTok by @kittysblind, the creator says their blindness is “not dark…it’s just nothing.”
- One Redditor says, “The best way I can describe it is to pretend that the entire universe is invisible… There is no color or flashes or floaters or anything. When you rub your eye, there are no spots or light streaks. Nothing.”
- Another Redditor describes losing their vision due to cranial problems this way: “When I had grey-outs, first I would lose colour detection, then everything would lose contrast and focus until it was just homogenous nothing. It's not dark, it's just... nothing.”
- Is anybody 100% blind? Yes. About 15% of blind people have a complete lack of light or form perception and are completely without sight.^{[5]
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  Research source} Most blind people can still detect some amount of light, shape, or contrast, though.
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Some blind people may see black if they lose vision later in life or have some light detection. If a person spent their whole life seeing before going blind, it’s possible they can perceive darkness or black since their brain has a memory of those experiences. Blackness may also be present if they can still detect trace amounts of light, and therefore, the absence of that light.^{[6]
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- The majority of people with acquired vision loss can still detect light, shadows, and even vague shapes (depending on their condition).^{[7]
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- Did you know? When you close your eyes, you’re not seeing black. You’re seeing a deep shade of gray known as Eigengrau (“intrinsic gray” in English). Your vision cells in your retina can spontaneously activate, sending faint visual signals to your brain that are processed as a super dark gray that appears black.^{[8]
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And, some blind people actually see lots of lights and colors. For some people with a complete lack of light perception (total blindness), the brain tries to fill the void left by the complete lack of visual stimulation with hallucinations. Some blind people report seeing bright light, flashes of color, and geometric shapes changing or dancing in the periphery.^{[9]
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- These hallucinations are known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome or Charles Bonnet hallucinations. Some people have experienced elaborate geometric grids and lattices, while some have even seen landscapes, animals, faces, and people.^{[10]
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- Only those who lost vision later in life can experience these hallucinations. Your brain has to have had experience seeing lights, colors, and objects to generate these images. You might even see them faintly when you close your eyes sometimes, too!

Section 3 of 5:

How to Visualize Nothing

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Close one eye, turn your open eye out, and try to see out of the closed eye. This trick posted on TikTok by @filspixel can sort of help you experience what nothing “looks” like. When you close both eyes, you see a lot of black space. With only one eye closed, though, you don’t notice as much black because nearly all of your brain’s visual processing power is directed toward your open eye (it actually suppresses input from the closed eye).^{[11]
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- To make your brain focus even more on your open eye, turn it away from your closed eye so you’re looking to the side.
- Now, try to “see” through your closed eye. You don’t really perceive blackness or darkness (maybe just a tiny bit in your periphery). Instead, there’s just a perception of…nothing.
- Here’s another trick: Try to see what’s behind you. You don’t perceive darkness or black behind you—you just don’t perceive anything. You’re seeing nothing.^{[12]
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- Did you know there are real colors that you can’t see? Check out our article on impossible colors to blow your mind even more!

Section 4 of 5:

What does nothing look like in space?

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In outer space, even the emptiest voids do not contain true nothingness. You might think that nothingness looks like the deep, dark voids of outer space—an eternity of black stretching in all directions with nothing inside of it. The problem is, even those voids have something in them. Random atoms and molecules are few and far between, but they’re still there. Energy and radiation, like electromagnetic fields or cosmic rays, permeate everything. And dark matter, which is invisible to us, is present everywhere.^{[13]
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- Even vacuums are not truly nothing. Due to some weird and exciting quantum physics, quantum fields and “virtual particles” that pop in and out of existence almost instantaneously can inhabit a vacuum (a space devoid of all matter) and leave energy behind, filling the space with something.^{[14]
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Some speculate nothingness exists outside the boundaries of the universe. However, processing this idea requires some mind-bending thought experiments. To start, we’ve known for decades that the universe is expanding.^{[15]
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Research source} So, that means it has to be expanding into something, right? Some take the part-scientific, part-philosophic view that there may be a true nothingness anywhere the universe doesn’t yet exist. But…
- Some theories suggest that the universe may be infinite (we may never know for sure, though).^{[16]
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  Research source} And if the universe is infinite, that means it exists everywhere, which means there are no boundaries or edges.^{[17]
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  Research source} If this is the case, then can a nothingness outside of the universe exist?

Section 5 of 5:

What is nothing in philosophy?

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Philosophically, “nothing” is the complete absence of anything—and may not exist. Humans have been debating the real meaning and existence of nothingness for thousands of years, and there’s no consensus on what it really is. Here is a breakdown of one of the most common trains of thought about what nothingness is:^{[18]
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- Nothing vs. no-thing: For clarity, some philosophers think of “Nothing” (a noun, like the thing this article is about) and “no-thing” (the absence of things).
- If you think of “nothing” as the presence of absence, then some believe that the absence is itself a thing. Therefore, “Nothing” is an actual thing that exists.
- However, if you consider “nothing” to be the absence of presence (no-thing), or the negative state of presence, then you don’t have to face the existence of “nothing.” Instead, everything is framed by where existence is and is not, and “nothing” doesn’t necessarily exist.
- Example: Say you have a hole in the bottom of a bucket. You could say, “There is a hole”, indicating the presence of the hole (Nothing). Or, you could say “there is a lack of bucket” where the hole is, indicating the absence of the bucket. Both are correct ways to refer to the hole (the “nothing”).