Why Does HDR Look Washed Out in PS5

Is Your HDR not HDR'ing Properly? Let's Fix That!

Abdul Muqsit
Abdul Muqsit
2 Min Read

HDR (High Dynamic Range) introduces a much wider color depth and intensity to the scene and should always be turned on if you have a supporting monitor. But an uncalibrated HDR setup can make your PS5 games washed out and boring to look at.

Your HDR looks washed out on the PS5 because you haven’t calibrated it properly from the Screen and Video section in the PS5 settings. Take the calibration test and set the Deep Color Output to enhance your picture quality.

Let’s take a look at those HDR settings in your PS5 and see what changes when you set them up the right way.

Calibrating HDR on the PS5

  • You need to go into your PS5 Settings
  • Under the Screen and Video settings, you’ll spot the Color subsection.
  • There, select the Adjust HDR option and go through the 3 steps to adjust & calibrate HDR according to your monitor/TV’s capacity.
  • Other than that, you should set RGB Range and Deep Color Output to Automatic. This will also help you in adjusting your PS5’s brightness levels and make them more balanced.
  • You can also make adjustments to the HDR settings for each game depending on the type of adjustments that were added by the developers. Some devs let you tinker with Paper White levels, while others give you standard sliders.

If you set the RGB Range to Limited on a 10-bit panel, the colors might seem to be greyed out and will lack punch. That’s why we suggested keeping those settings on Automatic.


If your PS5’s HDR colors still look washed out and grey, then perhaps its an issue with your HDMI cable or TV/monitor. Consult the manual and forums to see which settings you can adjust to potentially fix the issue.

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As an enthusiastic gamer, wanderer, and anime consumer, I find that a good day is one spent discussing and writing about games, but an even better day is spent playing them.
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