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I am thinking of Ultramarine specifically. I notice some have black, red, or green lenses. Is there a reason? Is it just aesthics? From a fluff standpoint all I can think of is...

Black = normal like sunglasses and bright worlds
Red = infrared (like predator)
Green = Night Vision

Or am I overthinking this? Which do you prefer?

You're overthinking it.

Ideally, you would use a colour that contrasts with the majority colour of the armour (so that they stand out) using the normal colour wheel colour theory.

Otherwise, since the helmet systems contain multiple vision modes as well as target tracking abilities, the colour is up to the artist painting them.

Yeah, what Chromedog said, it's just colour wheel theory. Ultramarines predominantly have red lenses because their helmets are blue (white for veterans), except for sergeants who have green lenses because their helmets are red. Fluff-wise, colour makes no difference. The red lenses of the Ultramarines, the green lenses of the Imperial Fists and the Blood Angels, and the yellow lenses of the Salamanders, are all functionally identical.

Real world? Practicality of an effective paintjob.

40k world? I really like your explanation that it's showing different spectrums.

The lens color is essentially chosen for me by a color wheel. Green lenses go well with red armor, red lenses ( especially with a nice orange highlight) go well with blue, etc...

Because its cool looking and artistic and inspired by fantasy and existing schemes.



And that's about it; you could easily craft a "rare coloured crystal shaped into lens that provides vision enhancement" type of fluff to justify it; but this is a case where purely visual choices would be defined by purely fluff choices. the amount of "real world realness" would only be present if you actually researched it; and no one would really know about it unless you told them.


I mean heck the armour colours are not particularly well chosen for camouflage in any form. Heck even Tyranids don't make use of thing like stripes to confuse attacking opponents (seriously an army of zebra tyranids - try shooting a gaunt when you can't tell what you're shooting at when its a sea of stripes).

I absolutely agree with the other posts, Lens colour is mostly a question of what looks good and stands out on the miniature. But I totally get where you're coming from, the discrepancy in lens colours bugs me as well.
I experienced this problem years ago. Being an Ultramarines collector, I painted my minis blue and naturally went for red lenses. When I got to the sergeants however, it suddenly dawned on me that red lenses would look silly and almost identical to the red paint on the helmet itself... my solution was to switch to green, predictably. Fluffwise it's really weird to have those different colours for the same material though.

Ideally, you would sit down and plan which colours you use before painting your army, so you can plan ahead for this palette issue. Best pick a colour that goes well with all types of helmets paints you will use, which gives you consistency and makes your paintjob look awesome.

For Ultramarines, an ochre-ish yellow might work for all colours of helmet.

I echo the others here. My lenses are purely done on a aesthetic point of view. My Horus Heresy world eater force have green lenses (I have told, about 50 times that MK4 DOES NOT HAVE GREEN LENSES AND IT'S HERESY ITS SELF TO HAVE THE WRONG COLOUR? It's like dude chill) to make the eyes pop and it's another color on the pallet.

Well power armours manufactured on hundreds of forgeworlds so they won't all use the same material during production which can easily explain the difference.

But really I go with what looks right.

Maybe it is an affectation of the forgeworld which produced the armour i.e. depending on the materials available.

Red of course, to aim faster.

 Dynas wrote:
I am thinking of Ultramarine specifically. I notice some have black, red, or green lenses. Is there a reason? Is it just aesthics? From a fluff standpoint all I can think of is...

Black = normal like sunglasses and bright worlds
Red = infrared (like predator)
Green = Night Vision

Or am I overthinking this? Which do you prefer?

I think the lenses actually change color based on those conditions you described? IE: Tech is so advanced that the lenses can accomplish all three things in 40k fictional reality.

It is red when they are drunk, black when they are sober. I thought it was common knowledge

When I used to have Space Marines the eye colour was one of the ways I was able to differentiate the squads. Didn't like the big numbers on the shoulders for my custom chapter.

It's picking a color that looks good with the rest of the scheme. It's just aesthetics.

Little known part of going from a scout to a space marine is they ask your favorite color. Generally it's red, green or blue, as scouts are not very creative.