People get cataract in their eyes when they age. The color perceived by the senile cataract eyes desaturates because of the environment light that scatters in the eyes by the hazy crystalline lenses. We investigated the effect of the desaturation on brightness of objects in terms of the equivalent lightness Leq*, which is composed of the achromatic lightness Lachr* and the chromatic lightness Lchr*. If the color desaturates, Lchr* becomes smaller and consequently Leq* becomes smaller in the cataract eyes. Leq* with and without cataract experiencing goggles at room illuminances to cover mesopic to photopic level was measured. Red, yellow, green, and blue patches of size 2 degrees x 2 degrees arc of the visual angle were investigated with the direct heterochromatic brightness matching between the color patches and a gray scale. Both Leq* took about the same value. Leq* with goggles was then transferred to the final Leq* where the matching gray scale was observed without goggles to express the equivalent lightness of cataract eyes by the gray scale perceived by normal eyes. Leq* with goggles was lower than Leq* without goggles by about 10 L* units in all the four colors. This reduction was almost equal to the reduction of L* by the reduced transmittance of the goggles showing that there was no effect of color desaturation. The color appearance in the color patches was measured by the elementary color naming method, and the results clearly showed the color desaturation with goggles implying decrease of Lchr*. We concluded that the scattered environment light compensated the decrease of Lchr* to keep the brightness of stimuli unchanged. (c) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 38, 267-276, 2013