If water is clear....?

Question

then why does everything get darker when wet?

ex: light green top, gets wet, now dark green

blonde hair, takes shower, dark blonde/brown hair

Answer 1

**warning:  what follows is one of my "made up on the spot" answers, and may not entirely reflect reality.

The color (and brightness for that matter) of an object comes from light reflecting off of it.  When an object is coated in water, light has to travel through water, reflect off of the object, and then travel through water again before you see it.  This adds extra scattering and absorption to the path of the light, and as a result less light reflects off of the object and makes it to you, a difference which we perceive as the object being darker.

For the record, water isn't perfectly clear - it has a very tiny blue tinge.