We compared the perceived segregation of patterns composed of the same two element types arranged in vertical stripes in the top and bottom regions and in a checkerboard in the middle region. The elements in all patterns differed in hue. Some patterns were equated for luminance and others for brightness. We investigated the effects of hue, spatial scale, and background luminance on the segregation of the element-arrangement patterns. Hue similarity, as rated by subjects in a separate procedure, was a relatively weak factor for predicting perceived segregation. The effects of brightness differences and luminance differences interacted with background luminance and spatial scale. Perceived segregation was stronger with a black background than with a white background (Pessoa, Beck, and Mingolla, ARVO '94; Vision Research, in press) and stronger for higher spatial frequencies. The results are discussed in terms of the relative importance of ‘low-order’ factors such as cone contrasts and ‘high-order’ factors such as similarity in mediating texture segregation.