Whenever I try WILD, I can never tell if the colours I’m seeing are HI, or Phosphenes(Those sparkly lights you see when you shut your eyes tightly).
Can anybody here tell me if there is a way to tell the difference?
Well, when you stare at a HI it will eventually transform into something, and you are not supposed to close your eyes hard…
I don’t close my eyes hard, but I can still see them.
In general, you will know when you see hypnagogic imagery. Phosphenes are just blobs of light and color, sometimes with fine but repetitive detail (in my case they often look like golden arabesque). Hypnagogic visions (or imagery) are more than that, they are more complex, there can be people, animals, abstract patterns, landscapes… they are sort of “dreamlets”. Also, it is (for me at least) much easier to observe HI’s morning brother - the hypnopompic imagery.
-NL
Yes indeed, hypnagogic imagery are… images - obvious, isn’t? 
- or little animated scenes. They are realistic, they represent faces, landscapes, objetcs, etc. and they suddenly and randomly appear in front of your eyes, as they were projected on a 2D screen.
This is true, but a lot of my HI is things like loading bars, such as on a web browser or in a game. Occasionally i’ll hear speech and such, along with the images.
Are phosphenes the colors/lights you see when you stand up too fast? Anyone know what I’m talking about? It’s like when you’re light-headed or something?
Lol! That’s funny too much. Perhaps you’re waiting for a dream to load? It could be a good way of entering a LD. 
Yes indeed, what you describe are phosphenes. Now there are different sort of phosphenes and many ways of seeing them, all the phosphenes are not produced through the same neural/visual processes.
it is. that’s what i use it for.
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My HI often starts with a dragonhead that fly around in darkness, and after a while the environment starts to show up behind it.