  Data from the VSX, SDSS DR12, and Gaia DR2 catalogs were combined in order to
explore the observed temperature distribution of known contact binaries.
Color-temperature relations were applied to calculate the effective
temperatures of approximately 20000 binaries and a temperature distribution was
built using the results with a precision better than 160 K. The temperature
distribution shifts to higher temperatures when increasing the distance of the
observed objects. The distribution contains a a previously detected bump in the
6000-7000 K range. It is shown that this second maximum is caused by distant
and highly reddened objects that are systematically more luminous than contact
binaries in this temperature range. We argue that these objects are other
variables, possibly semi-detached binaries, misclassified as contact binaries
and that the actual temperature distribution of contact binaries does not
contain such a peak.
