Short answer
Display P3 is an RGB colour space defined by Apple that pairs the red and green primaries of digital-cinema DCI-P3 with the D65 white and the tone curve of sRGB. It covers roughly a quarter more of the u′v′ chromaticity diagram than sRGB, but the gain is uneven: large for greens and cyan-greens, moderate for reds and oranges, and almost nothing for blue, which shares the same primary.
DCI-P3 was specified for digital-cinema projection, with its own DCI white point (x 0.314, y 0.351) and a 2.6 gamma. Apple took the P3 red (x 0.680, y 0.320) and green (0.265, 0.690) primaries, kept sRGB's blue (0.150, 0.060), and combined them with the D65 white and the sRGB transfer function, producing a space that behaves like sRGB for software but reaches further. It appeared on the late-2015 Retina iMac and the 2016 iPad Pro, and is now registered with the ICC and built into CSS as color(display-p3 …). Calling it 'DCI-P3' is a common mistake: the white point and tone curve differ, so the same numbers do not produce the same colour.
Gamut area comparisons compress a three-dimensional difference into one number. A more useful question is how much more saturated a colour of a given lightness and hue can be. At an OKLCH lightness of 0.7, the most chromatic in-gamut green and cyan available in P3 each have roughly a third more chroma than the best sRGB equivalents; reds gain about a quarter; oranges and yellows gain around a sixth; and blues gain under a tenth, because P3 and sRGB share their blue primary. That is why wide-gamut screens make foliage, turquoise water, neon signage and sports kits look noticeably richer, while skies and denim look almost the same.
A screen marketed as 'P3' usually means its panel covers most of the P3 gamut — manufacturers quote percentage coverage, which is measured against the P3 triangle and is often somewhere in the 90s. A screen can cover P3 and still show sRGB colours oversaturated if the software does not colour-manage, and a browser can support color(display-p3 …) in CSS while the screen it is running on is only sRGB, in which case the colour is gamut-mapped down. Three separate things must line up: content that contains P3 colours, software that knows what they mean, and a panel that can produce them.
Most real designs gain from P3 only in a few accent colours. The dependable pattern is to define every colour in sRGB first, then add a wider-gamut version for screens that report @media (color-gamut: p3), and to check that the sRGB fallback still works as a design rather than as a degraded copy. A P3 colour that is gamut-mapped to sRGB keeps its lightness and hue but loses chroma, so two accents that were distinct in P3 can collapse into the same sRGB colour. Checking pairs of colours, not just single swatches, in both spaces catches that before it ships.
| Hue | sRGB | Display P3 | Rec. 2020 | P3 gain over sRGB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red (30°) | 0.192 | 0.243 | 0.312 | +27% |
| Orange (60°) | 0.164 | 0.188 | 0.190 | +15% |
| Yellow (110°) | 0.153 | 0.178 | 0.183 | +16% |
| Green (145°) | 0.220 | 0.299 | 0.312 | +36% |
| Cyan (195°) | 0.119 | 0.161 | 0.261 | +35% |
| Blue (265°) | 0.156 | 0.169 | 0.172 | +8% |
| Magenta (330°) | 0.314 | 0.350 | 0.385 | +11% |
Why: Both were P3 colours outside sRGB; gamut mapping reduced each to the sRGB boundary at the same hue.
Fix: Pick sRGB fallbacks by hand so the pair stays distinct, and serve the P3 versions under @media (color-gamut: p3).
Why: The phone saved Display P3 images and a step in the upload pipeline stripped the profile, or the viewer ignores it.
Fix: Keep the embedded profile, or convert to sRGB during upload processing.
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
StandardStrong evidence
Display P3 uses red primary x 0.680, y 0.320, green x 0.265, y 0.690 and blue x 0.150, y 0.060, with a D65 white point and the sRGB transfer function; Apple is the responsible organisation in the ICC registry.
Source: ICC colour encoding registry: Display P3; CSS Color Module Level 4
FactStrong evidence
Display P3 shares its primary chromaticities with DCI-P3 but not its white point or transfer function, so the two are not interchangeable; CSS Color 4 deliberately avoids calling display-p3 'DCI-P3'.
Source: CSS Color Module Level 4
FactModerate evidence
Apple introduced Display P3 screens with the late-2015 Retina iMac and the early-2016 iPad Pro, and WebKit colour-matches untagged images as sRGB on those devices.
Source: Improving Color on the Web (WebKit blog, 1 July 2016)
Colourwise analysisStrong evidence
At OKLCH lightness 0.7, Display P3 permits roughly 35% more chroma than sRGB for greens and cyans but less than 10% more for blues.
Based on: Computed by Colourwise by searching for the gamut boundary of each space at fixed OKLCH lightness and hue; see the table on this page.
Caveat: OKLCH chroma is a model of perceived colourfulness, not a measurement; the ratios would differ somewhat in CIELAB.
Source: ICC colour encoding registry: Display P3; International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) webstore and catalogue; A perceptual color space for image processing (Oklab)
Reviewed 29 September 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.