It is well-known that past knowledge affects color perception, as for example in the perception of familiar objects having richer colors. Although there have been many studies on human memory function with regard to color perception, it is not clear how color signals are treated in the early stages of human memory formation. Here, we tested whether in early memory color information is conserved without any interaction of other visual information. We found that performance of chromatic discrimination between a memorized color and a test color did not deteriorate under any contrast condition of dynamic luminance masking, and thus concluded that color signals were not disturbed by dynamic luminance signals. The results indicate that chromatic sensation per se is not modified at the early stages of the human memory system. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 36, 47-54, 2011; Published online 24 February 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary. com). DOI 10.1002/col.20587