Why do things look lighter or bluer?

Things look lighter or bluer because light bounces off them in different ways.

Imagine you're playing with a ball, when it bounces on the floor, it goes up and comes back down. Light works kind of like that ball. When light hits something, it can bounce off it, and we see that as color.

When light bounces off something, some of it stays with the object, and some of it comes to your eyes. If a lot of light comes back to you, the thing looks brighter, like when you shine a flashlight on a white wall, it gets really light.

Now imagine you have two balls: one is blue, and one is red. The blue ball only bounces blue light back to your eyes, while the red ball bounces red light. So when you see something that bounces blue light, it looks bluer, just like how a blue toy looks when you shine a light on it.

Sometimes things look bluer because they reflect more blue light, and lighter because they bounce more light back to your eyes. It's like the ball game, but with colors!