Stable optical properties of high transmittance and low yellow index are required for a polyimide film as a flexible display substrate, but thermal processes could result in its color change by thermal imidization. To prevent the color change, anti-oxidants have been used, but as yet though, the effect of oxidation in polyimide has remained unexplored. We explore the yellow index and absorbance changes of fluorinated polyimide after thermal imidization to determine the color change kinetics. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of anti-oxidants on film color change, showing that anti-oxidants even accelerate the color change due to their decomposition. Both experimental findings and density functional theory calculations suggest that the oxidative stability for the thermal imidization could have a modest impact, and in turn yellow index is less dependent on the oxidation of fluorinated polyimide, attributed to mild interaction between fluorinated polyimide and oxygen insufficient to form strong oxidation of diamine groups.