When pupil size changes, the amount of light that falls onto the retina changes as well. However, in daily life, this does not make us perceive the world as brighter or darker. There are many indirect cues in our environment (e.g., ambient light intensity, world knowledge about object brightness) that support brightness constancy. Here we asked whether pupil-size changes influence subjective brightnessin the absence of such indirect cues. To investigate this, we measured the subjective brightness of a tester stimulus relative to a referent stimulus as a function of pupil size during presentation of the tester. In Experiment 1, we manipulated pupil size by varying memory load in a working-memory task (i.e., larger pupils with higher load as well as after incorrect responses). We found some evidence that the tester stimulus was perceived as darker when pupils were larger. In Experiment 2, we presented a red or blue display (i.e., larger pupils with red light). Here, we again found that the tester stimulus was perceived as darker when pupils were larger. We speculate that the visual system takes pupil size into account when making brightness judgements, possibly even relying on a large-pupils- indicate-darkness heuristic; this could explain why large pupils lead to an underestimation of brightness, despite an increase in light influx. (And also why a recent study using a pharmacological manipulation of pupil size, which the visual system can likely not take into account, found the opposite pattern.) This is an intriguing step towards understanding the role of pupil size in brightness perception.