To ask you all to please close your eyes for a moment and tell me...

[password13366]

... what you see?

Any movement, colours, static or just nothing?

Red with black lines like a 3D sketch of a house or something. Depth and height and everything. But I do have a bit of a headache, which may be contributing.

I get that effect very rarely and its always followed by a crippling migraine.

My mother gets it too and has also been diagnosed with migrane but she never gets the painful headache. Just the visuals.

I also see static, always have done. Does this mean something?

Black and white static when it's light, just black when it's dark in the room.

Dark orange/brown background (dark baked bean is a great description!) with flashing lights, kind of firework-style pinpoint explosions, and checkerboard/cross-hatch patterns that grow and shrink.

I thought everyone had this! But i do have synaesthesia.

I love this thread. I love how everybody has dutifully closed their eyes and is reporting what they see. It's very wholesome.

Yes, it's the sort of thing children do and is kinda cute when you imagine a load of adults sitting their with their eyes squeezed shut lol.

Op I would get your eyes checked out if you see static when your eyes are open.

I'm the same as you OP. I'd describe it is 'fizzy', like sprays of colours over a very dark brown.

I don't see anything. Just darkness.

The inside of my eyelids.

Different types of static. Sometimes lots of bright, multi-coloured dots, sometimes indigo blotches that move around like the moving ink pictures you used to get in Sesame Street. Always symmetrical patterns though.

They're quite pretty and keep me entertained.

A brief after-image of the room, but this barely lasts a few seconds. After that, darkness.

There was a time when I'd been blindfolded for a long time (being driven by my DH to a surprise), and I started to see swirly patterns. This never happened again though.

I was fascinated as a child by what you "see" with your eyes closed, and why I couldn't see the pattern on the scarf over my eyes when playing pin the tail on the donkey; also how you see the blackness in front of you, but nothing behind.

Optician, OP.

I see the same colour as everyone else upthread, same negative imprint if I've stared at something a while. Mind's eye occasionally flashes up falling/sliding down a tunnel sort of motion that harks back to a nightmare from babyhood.

The static sounds like the sort of thing I used to see before they realised my eyes were knackered. Still do, if I take my glasses off.

Could be an underlying stress thing too, worsening the effect by causing you to worry a bit.

Briefly a negative version of the bright outline of my monitor, but then mostly a sort of flickering reddish-blackness, a sort of static screen type effect I suppose at first, then lots of different lights and colours fading in and out on a black background or swimming across my field of vision, or little flashes here and there etc.

Like a vaguely blue and red tinged static pattern over a red background.

This may be my favourite thread I've ever read on Mumsnet. I can't explain why but it's really cheered me up.

It’s called visual snow. I have it, I also get the sky flashing if I look at it too long.

Wholesome :o I love it too, it's fascinating. I had no idea some people just see nothing!

I like looking at the patterns if I can't sleep.

There are various levels of visuals people get when they close their eyes, there’s a Wikipedia article on it.
I quite easily and quickly get spinning fractals followed by random objects. Others stop at flashes of light and after images.

Static and shape outlines too which I think are negatives of what I see just before I close my eyes.

When it's dark I often get little flashes of light, which were a bit disturbing to begin with but I'm used to them now. Regularly checked by the optician so there's no underlying issues.

I get vision distortion just before a migraine but I can see that with my eyes open. Starts out as a blind spot before spreading in to what can only be described as a kaleidoscope effect.

Thanks, very interesting. I hope this thread doesn't make people that were blissfully unaware (like me!) very conscious of the difference

I have seen an optician regularly for normal check ups and all is normal (I am slightly short sighted though)

Greyish brownish smoke with some white claps almost like lightening
Then sometimes purple and green sprinkles after a while

Fine squiggly lines that float down my eye, a greyish pinky background, then sometimes it's a bit like a kaleidoscope with the same cross hatch type things PP have mentioned.

Although I don't ever notice these things at night when I'm in bed, only if my eyes are closed and it's light

This is a very well established phenomenon and completely normal. Goethe discusses it in his theory of colour, and Jonathan Crary also has sections on it in his book Techniques of the Observer.

I see different things when I close my eyes - always have. Sometimes vivid images but I know that's my "mind's eye" or imagination, not what I actually see. When I actually "see" rather than imagine I see green cell shapes with dark shaded edges as a default, though I know those aren't really exactly "seen" either, or just dark orange. I never see perfect blackness I don't think, even when I've been camping far from any source of light other than moon and stars...

Nothing at all, just dark, not even a colour, it's a darker nothing if I put my hands over my eyes too lol.

Do any of your family members have the same OP?