Yesyesyes this here. Icons need colors, the smaller the more. Otherwise, they might as well be gray blobs. Peripheral vision works with colors, but it doesn’t do finer details.

rant:

But in the end, user interfaces are mostly “dead” anyway. No more structure, no more colors, no more icons. Everything is a flat sea of labels and boxes (or sometimes even just lines) floating(!) around. And no two user interfaces use the same style, even from the same vendor.

/rant