Washed-Out Colors in Unity
Scene looks too bright, flat or too dark
Also known as: Unity colors look washed out · Unity linear vs gamma · Unity color space · Unity textures too bright · Unity sRGB checkbox
Quick answer
Colors look washed out or too dark in Unity when the project color space and the texture settings do not agree. Set Edit > Project Settings > Player > Other Settings > Color Space to Linear, keep sRGB on for color textures such as base color, and switch it off for data textures such as normal, roughness, metallic and masks. Mixed settings shift every value in the material.
How to fix it
Linear is the right choice for PBR and for almost every modern project; Gamma is mostly for old mobile targets. If you change the color space, check the lighting and post-processing again, since colors will look different. When a texture from Substance Painter looks wrong, the usual cause is a data map left on sRGB or a color map with sRGB switched off.
