Color perception in anything of the than bright planetary nebulae has always been a subtle thing for me, and that’s only been since 1991 when I started using 20 inch and larger scopes. Here’s a list of what I’ve seen in emission nebulae, all using low powers around 100x:
M42
I always see the brightest part of the nebula around the Trapezium as a distinct electric green and only detect pink in the area outside of this when the sky is particularly transparent. The sky doesn’t even have to be super dark either as I’ve seen the pink under SQM skies of 21.2, although 21.95 shows it much better! The brighter parts of wings come across as a dark brick red-ish-brown and everything else are shades of grey. Some are warm shades and other slight cool, but for the most part just grey of different intensities.
M20
I generally see the red part of the Trifid as a very warm grey and on a few occasions as a very unsaturated red. The blue part is always a neutral grey to me.
M8
I have yet to perceive any color at all, which surprises me. Only a neutral grey.
M17
Same as M8, only a neutral grey.
On the other hand, the most saturated color I’ve seen in a DSO was this past summer in Campbell’s Hydrogen Star with my 28 inch. The ring of nebulosity around the central star was a distinct and saturated red when the seeing settled down, and it was a wonderful sight. The bright central star was white, so perhaps this contrast made the red look redder. Also, to see the red ring well I needed about 400x, which made the sky background that much darker so perhaps that helped contrast too.
For planetaries, the Blue Snowball is a lovely Robin’s Egg blue but all the other planetaries that come to mind are fairly similar shades of Turquoise green. Oddly, the Ring and Dumbbell don’t show me any color.
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