Here is my collection of the best optical illusions that will definitely warp your mind! Now granted that you are given the luxury of knowing these are optical illusions in advance, so just imagine what types of illusions your brain goes through on a day to day basis when you’re not noticing.
Some of these optical illusions might hurt your mind a little bit, so sit back and relax and enjoy all of the best optical illusions. Also, I’ll try to offer a brief explanation as to why the optical illusion works.
NOTE: If you’re on a mobile or a small screen, some of these illusions might now work as they require a large screen.
The Ponzo Illusion: Which Car is the biggest?
They are the IDENTICAL! Take a ruler and measure. I dare you.
The Ponzo illusion is created by our brain judging an object’s size based by its perceived distance. The brain places the car into context with it’s surroundings. The third car is furhter away ( in perspective) so therefore it appears to look larger.
The Ames Room Illusion! Wha in the !? .. but… How?
The Ames Room illusion disrupts our depth perception. It’s created by slanting the back wall towards the camera and the ceiling slanted down. However, from one vantage point, the room looks like a normal room. I love this one, it’s one of my favorites and one of the BEST optical illusions out there!
Stare at the woman’s nose for about 10 seconds. Then look at a lighter surface, like a wall, and blink rapidly. Her face should now have color!
FOCUS on the cross in the center and observe the blank spot rotating around.
Now you should be seeing a green circle appear and rotating. Now it appears to be rotating, but in actuality, the pink circles are burning an image into your retinas, a negative, which is the opposite color, green. So when the pink circles rotate, they are just revealing the burned image into your mind!
Check out this face illusion, it looks like a face in the mask, but take closer look…
in actuality, it is an image of two people making out and not a single person’s face. it took me a while to see it, but once you see it, you’ll always see it!
At first glance, these women look very attractive…
Flip the image over and you’ll see something completely demonic!
Why didn’t you see the creepy faces before!? Well, you can blame your brains function dedicated to face recognition and perception. Think about it, we hardly ever run into upside down faces. So it’s hard to spot differences when we do.
Which Tower is leaning farther right?
Neither, they are the same. It appears that the right tower is leaning more to the right. This deals with perspective optical illusions again. Figure it this way, if these two towers were standing by eachother in the real world, the two towers would converge to a point, these are simply the rules of perspective. Same reason that long roads converge to a single point in the distance. So IF these two towers are really parallel, then they would start to converge from the distortion of your perspective. They aren’t converging, so your brain doesn’t think they are the same or parallel. Your brain thinks “one has to be off”
Are the Horizontal lines Straight or Crooked?
A Great line optical illusion that strategically places black and white tiles to distort your peripheral vision that make the lines appear to be crooked
The little dots below look like they are changing color as they rotate around the center. However, if you concentrate on a single dot, this is definitely not the case!
Check out this park inside Paris, it looks like a gigantic 3D globe…
But it’s actually completely flat.
This is a 3D illusion that uses perspective and carefully planned out design to create the illusion only at a specific vantage point.
Tell me what orange circle looks bigger?
What if I told you, they are the same size!
I like to call this the contrast illusion, but it’s better known as the Ebbinghaus illusion. This illusion takes advantage of our perception of relative size. The circle above is surrounded by larger circles, making it seem like it’s smaller than a same sized circle with smaller circles around it.
The Hollow Face Illusion – CRAZY! The dinosaurs’ eyes follow you wherever you go… A pretty creepy illusion!
The “hollow face illusion” are the same type of illusions that you see at Disney Land’s haunted houses. The illusion is caused by our brain perceiving objects different when they are faces. When you move farther away, the dinosaurs right eye becomes smaller, however, you perceive it as the This optical illusion This is one of the coolest illusions in the list of Best Optical Illusions!
Focus on the Yellow Dot as you Move your head closer to the screen and then further away. As you do, the rings rotate!
The Pinna-Brelstaff illusion occurs due to errors in our peripheral vision.
Which square is a lighter shade? Square A or B?
You won’t believe this, but square ‘A’ and square ‘B’ are the IDENTICAL shade of grey! This is one of the best optical Illusions! I literally, had to take this into Photoshop and check myself!!
This replica proves it…
Automatically, our brains adjust the color we focus on based on surrounding shadows and colors. Since square B lies in the shade of the cylinder (while still having the same color as square A), the brain is tricked in to believing that the grey is a lighter shade.
Take a close look at the squares below. The two squares, are actually the same exact color. Don’t believe me? Hold your finger over the crease between the two squares to prove yourself wrong!
This is called the Cornsweet illusion, which takes advantage of the brain’s lateral inhibition that creates more contrast between the two squares when the edges have different colors.
if you cross your eyes, you will see a very familiar face. Who do you see?
The above image is a dot illusion of Michael Jackson. At the image becomes smaller. it’s easier to notice the effect.
Stare at the swirling dots for at least 30 secs. Then stare at the photo below it.
This optical illusion is very similar to spinning around in a circle and as you stop, everything else still appears to be spinning.
The blue and yellow shapes look like they are moving staggeringly one after the other?
When you remove the black bard, you will notice that the cars are consistently moving the same distance. One is not farther from the other. The black bars distort your sense of colors and brain’s perception of the objects moving.
Move your head towards the picture. The light in the middle gets brighter! Move your head away from the picture and the light gets dimmer! Try it!
This illusion or effect is better known as the dynamic luminance-gradient effect noted by Alan Stubbs from the University of Maine.
Focus on one point in the center of the colored version of the image. Then wait till it changes to the black and white image. Amazingly, the image is now fully colored!
This is an awesome effect in this list of best optical illusions. As stated before, when you stare at an image, it burns the negative into your retinas. This makes sense because the trees are a purple color, which will burn a green-orange into your head. The windows are an orange color so they will burn a blue color into your retina.
Check out at all the white dots, some appear black.
You won’t be able to look at the black dots that appear in the white circles no matter how hard you try!
Akiyoshi Kitaoka creates images from geometric shapes that appear to move. Due to how the colors and geometry is set up, the image tricks the brain into thinking that it’s moving when it’s completely motionless.
Here is a more psychedelic illusion using the same principle.
Look from side to side, the room will start to appear to spin!
This is a pretty cool face illusion! Intersecting two images, a portrait and a profile picture. Which one are you looking at? The side of front?
Can you tell which way the train is moving? If you look long enough, your brain will flip it’s direction!
This is an example of the wagon wheel effect. if you close your eyes for a second and then open them the train sometimes changes directions. You can also change directions by imagining where the train is coming from.
What way is the middle dancer spinning? The answer is both.
This illusion is incredible. For the longest time, I could not get the woman to spin the other way in my mind until I found this image . This is when I was looking at just the image and not the other supplemental guides.
Focus on the green blinking dot for a couple seconds and notice what happens to the yellow dots.
the yellow dots seem to disappear when in reality they don’t. Stationary images lose our attention faster than moving images.
Are the circles touching? Are they Spirals?
Using clever design and planning, this amazing 3D Illusions becomes possible.
Which Orange is the real Orange?
More Examples of amazing 3D Art that tricks your brain.
Can you believe it that the depth of the lake is 370 ft ?!! A natural optical illusion, Flathead Lake is so clear that it creates the perception that it is very shallow.
Featured in the Best Optical Illusions at www.flexyourbrain.com
A 3D room that has been painted to make it look like people are floating on air.
With your hands, cover both sides of the hallways, watch for a couple seconds, then place one hand covering the middle of the hallway and observe. The image magically seems to speed up.
A Strategic and well thought out Animation!
Share this list of Best Optical Illusions with a Friend!
Share buttons below! See how smart they really are, I bet they won’t be able to explain the Ames room Illusion. Also, drop me a message if you have any optical illusion you’d like to share with everyone and I’ll post it.