Café Wall Illusion

The café wall illusion, sometimes also called the Münsterberg illusion (Ashton Raggatt McDougall 2006), is an optical illusion produced by a black and white rectangular tessellation when the tiles are shifted in a zigzag pattern, as illustrated above. While the pattern seems to diverge towards the upper and lower right corners in the upper figure, the gray lines are actually parallel. Interestingly, the illusion greatly diminishes if black lines are used instead of gray.

Gregory and Heard (1979) first noticed the illusion on the wall decoration of a café in Bristol, England. The café wall illusion is only one among many visual distortion effects involving parallel lines. The most famous example of this kind is Zöllner's illusion.

The image above shows a picture of a building in Melbourne, Australia designed to exhibit this illusion (C. L. Taylor, pers. comm., Aug. 5, 2006). The building, completed in 2006, is part of Melbourne's Digital Harbour Port 1010 and houses the Australian Customs Service (Ashton Raggatt McDougall 2006).