Monitor Showing Wrong Colors After Windows 10 Driver Update? Fix It

Wrong colours after a Windows 10 driver update are caused by the update deleting or resetting your monitor’s ICC colour profile – go to Colour Management in Control Panel, select your monitor, and re-add the correct ICC profile from your monitor manufacturer to restore accurate colours. After a GPU driver update, colours may look washed out, overly saturated, too warm, too cool, or simply wrong compared to before the update. This happens because GPU driver installers sometimes reset the colour settings to a default state, removing any custom ICC profile that was assigned to the monitor. The colours you see are what the uncalibrated monitor produces without a profile – fixing it requires re-assigning the correct ICC profile.

Why Driver Updates Reset Monitor Colours

A GPU driver installer performs a full reinstall of the display driver stack. During this process, it resets the GPU colour settings to defaults and can clear the ICC colour profile assignment in Windows Colour Management. The monitor itself is not changed – the hardware is fine. It is the colour correction layer in Windows that is removed, leaving your monitor running uncorrected.

Step 1 – Check and Reassign the ICC Colour Profile

Press Win + S and search for Colour Management. Open the Colour Management window, go to the Devices tab, and select your monitor from the device dropdown. Click the Add button to browse for an ICC profile. If you have the manufacturer’s ICC profile installed, it will appear in the list. Select it and click Set as Default Profile. If no manufacturer profile is listed, you need to download it first.

Step 2 – Download the Correct ICC Profile

Go to your monitor manufacturer’s support page and search for your exact model. ICC profiles are usually available under Drivers or Software downloads alongside the monitor INF file. Download the ICC file (it has a .icm or .icc extension) and double-click it to install – Windows will automatically add it to the colour profile list. Return to Colour Management, select the newly installed profile, and click Set as Default Profile. After setting the profile, close Colour Management and check whether colours look correct. According to the Lagom LCD monitor test pages, you can use these standardised test patterns to verify that your monitor is displaying gradients, colours, and contrast correctly after applying the profile.

I ran into this on a BenQ PD2700Q monitor after updating the NVIDIA GPU driver on a Windows 10 workstation. The colours looked immediately washed out after the update. Going into Colour Management showed that no ICC profile was assigned to the monitor – the update had cleared it. Downloading the BenQ ICC profile from their support page and setting it as default restored accurate colours in about two minutes.

Per Michelle W., who is a Graphic Designer at a digital agency in Singapore, “After every GPU driver update my BenQ monitor colours reset to uncalibrated. The washed-out look is the ICC profile going missing. Re-adding it from the BenQ site takes two minutes and fixes it completely every time.”

Step 3 – Fix Washed-Out Colours From Wrong Colour Range Setting

If the ICC profile fix does not solve the problem, the GPU driver may have reset the output colour range to Full (0-255) when your monitor expects Limited (16-235), or vice versa. This causes the washed-out or over-crushed blacks look. Open your GPU control panel:

• NVIDIA – Right-click desktop, open NVIDIA Control Panel, go to Display > Change resolution, scroll to Output colour range and set it to Full for PC monitors, or Limited if connected to a TV.
• AMD – Open AMD Radeon Software, go to Display settings, look for Pixel Format and set it to RGB Full Range for monitors.
• Intel – Open Intel Graphics Command Center, go to Display, and check the colour range setting.

After adjusting the range, check your display again. For detailed information on colour management in Windows, see Microsoft’s guide on calibrating your display in Windows.

Step 4 – Roll Back the GPU Driver if Colours Are Still Wrong

If reassigning the ICC profile and fixing the colour range does not restore correct colours, the new GPU driver may have a colour rendering bug specific to your GPU or monitor combination. Open Device Manager, expand Display adapters, right-click your GPU, select Properties, go to the Driver tab, and click Roll Back Driver if available. If Roll Back is greyed out, download the previous driver version from the manufacturer’s driver history page and use DDU in Safe Mode to clean install it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do I find the ICC profile for my monitor?

Go to your monitor manufacturer’s support website and search for your exact model number. Look under Drivers or Software for a file with an .icm or .icc extension. Dell, LG, Samsung, BenQ, and ASUS all provide ICC profiles on their support pages. Some profiles also come bundled inside the monitor INF driver ZIP file.

What is the difference between an ICC profile and a colour calibration?

An ICC profile is a manufacturer-provided file that corrects your monitor’s colours based on factory measurements of that monitor model. A colour calibration is a custom profile created by measuring your specific physical monitor with a hardware colorimeter. The manufacturer ICC is a good baseline; a hardware calibration is more accurate for professional colour work. Both are applied through Colour Management in Windows.

Will rolling back the GPU driver restore my previous colour settings?

Rolling back the driver restores the previous driver version, which may not have had the colour reset issue. However, your custom ICC profile assignment may still need to be re-done manually, as profile assignments are stored separately from driver versions. After rolling back, go to Colour Management and confirm the correct profile is still assigned.

Why does my monitor look yellow after the driver update?

A yellow tint after a driver update is usually caused by Windows Night light being re-enabled during the install. Go to Settings > System > Display and check if Night light is turned on. Toggle it off. If Night light is already off and colours are still yellow or warm, check Colour Management for the correct ICC profile and check the GPU colour temperature settings in the GPU control panel.

Conclusion

Wrong colours after a Windows 10 GPU driver update almost always come down to the ICC profile being cleared during the install. Download the correct ICC profile from your monitor manufacturer, assign it in Windows Colour Management, and set it as the default. If colours are washed out rather than tinted, also check the output colour range setting in your GPU control panel – a mismatch between Full and Limited range is the other common cause. If neither fix works, roll back the GPU driver to the previous version.