Why people see #thedress (the dress) differently | Optometrist Explains

The colour of the dress has been a confusing one for a while now.

Is it blue and black or white and gold?

[GCATLiving]

I immediately saw blue and black and literally can't understand how anyone would think it was gold and white. Like, my brain just doesn't compute that possibility. I love that one innocent picture of a dress sparked massive controversy, changed what we understand about vision, and tore families and friendships apart. XD

[PastelAmulet]

So people usually tell me "the background shows it's obviously over exposed!" But my head reads it as "there's a blinding light behind the dress, and we're on the shaded side." So I've never seen black and seems i never will haha. I've tried a bajillion tricks over the years, no dice.

ETA: Didn't even expect people to see this. I know my perception isn't the correct one, I was there during the height of this "drama" lol. I just wanted to possibly explain why my brain sees it incorrectly, to those who don't understand.

[miask]

I’m watching this a year on and really enjoyed hearing from an ophthalmologist on this. I too saw white and gold, still do. I am 60+ with very light blue eyes with smaller pupils (due to medication, I think). Thank you so much for this! I look forward to seeing more of your content.

[stumbledotcom]

I see white and gold also. Surprised by the study that indicates a majority see blue and black because most people in my orbit saw white and gold also. I teach at a university so my sample included a wide range of ages. I think the image is more about how light manipulation influences our perception of color.

[JonathonBarton]

This is the very first time I realized that there's a third group of people - the one I'm in - who see it as BLUE and BROWN...
The blue I see in the lightest part of the blue (center bottom) is about the same shade as the youtube 'Comment' button, and the brown isn't really BROWN (like a UPS truck), it's a washed out brown like diluted tea or coffee. I can tell it's informed by the highlighted color at the top of the dress, because if I scroll down so I can't see that very brightly lit panel at the top right by the neck, the striped at the bottom become a LOT more convincingly black - the washed out color throws my perception of the rest for a loop.

[mrbrit]

The ex-web designer in me sees blue and brown/gold because that's what it is on the digital image. I suspect what people see depends a lot on what device they view it on and how it is calibrated.

Using the images at 1:15 and putting them into an image editor and looking at the rgb values confirms what you are seeing.
On the image of the actual dress, the 'black' sections have a relatively even red/green/blue component, and a level of around 30. This colour is dark gray bordering on black. In the blue sections, the red and green stay around 30, but the blue component jumps up above 100 in most places therefore the colour is blue.

On the over exposed image, the 'gold' sections, the red and green are fairly similar tho red is slightly more dominant, with a lower value of blue. The blue section of the dress has much higher RGB values overall, roughly R100, G120, B160 giving it a light blue tinge. Although these values increase and decrease, they maintain roughly the same balance.

These RGB values confirm what I see on my device. If someone sees different colours I would suggest you put it into a photo editor and see if the RGB values match the colours you are seeing.

Viewing things on a monitor is very heavily dependent on how it is configured and is often slightly different to how colours are generated in physical print. Computers generally use RGB, which is an additive system, physical prints such as magazines use CYMK, a subtractive system. Print designers need to be very careful of this and monitor calibration is a must, and designers often work with pantone values to ensure it comes out correct when printed onto a page.

[xeanluxcrille]

I see blue and black, but I think I understand why some others see white and gold. Still, with the surroundings in the picture, my brain has concluded it's an overexposed picture of a stiff-ish dress and decides the dress is blue and black. I'm quite familiar with this type of how "blue" appears since for both my grade school and high school years, my uniform has always been blue. I've seen my uniform appear this way countless times, and honestly, it's the blue giving it away for me to conclude the other color is black.

[evangelinex]

The blue and brown option is interesting because everytime I see the dress I see blue and gold/tan, even though I know it's blue and black. But at first glance the black always looks gold or tan, and I think it's because light is refracting off of the lycra/nylon in the lace details. I've never seen it as white though, and after a second my eyes always adjust to the coloring and it looks normal.. It's really fascinating how so many people can see one thing so differently.

[anman]

I remember when this whole dress colors thing was going on and then the "yanny" "laurel" audio thing after it. It has helped me to understand that the way people perceive our world can be as different and unique as individual people are themselves.

[rogerroger]

This is interesting. It literally always looks blue and black to me no matter what you do with the filters. I wonder if there's a correlation with my perception of it and the fact that I'm an artist. It'd be interesting if there was a study testing artist's perceptions (as in visual artists) to non-artists, and if there is a correlation, that sort of implies that someone could potentially train themselves to see it the correct way after learning more about colour, light, and shading via art.

[emyywolf]

Every inch of that dress is blue and black. It’s just extremely shiny

[paulhelberg]

My daughter showed me this dress and asked me what color it was. I told her it was white and gold like gold leaf had been applies to the golden stripes. She was astonished and explained that it is blue and black. I explained that in the early days of computer monitors offering super VGA resolution that I had been tested and could perceive nearly 16 million color variations presented to me on a high-quality screen. We were both amazed that we saw different images looking at the same dress. Thanks for your explanation.

[kylenason]

I originally saw it as blue and black. Then maybe a year or two ago, I decided to look at the original picture again and I saw white and gold. I was baffled that my eyes were actually seeing it differently than before. Then I kept staring at it for a good few minutes and it then turned black and blue again in my vision and I’ve been seeing it as blue and black since. I was also amazed that my eyes actually turned the colors I was seeing back to black and blue while I was looking at it.

[deborahsheldon]

After I had my cataract surgery, I realized that colors that I saw a beige and gray were actually periwinkle and blue-purple. I learned that my eyes weren't allowing in enough light to see the true colors. I previously was a person who saw the dress as white and gold.

[JochSejoMusic]

I have perfect color vision and with both the sun lit picture and the original black and blue dress to the left I can see both with white and gold wash of sunlight going through a black and blue dress. The gold color is probably coming from the type of density material the thread is made from. Meaning the fabric isn't a perfectly 100% black just like if you take one strand of hair it will be a much brighter color with a more silver or gold hue.

That is probably why the dress looks white and gold because the thread is just painted with a fabric paint or dipped in color and the original fabric from the factory before colorizing the thread into blue and black, the thread is pure white and dark gold or bronze depending what material the thread is made from in the first place.

No thread is naturaly black or any color (in this prize class of a cheap dress), you have to color them after the fact and then if you shine a strong enough light through the fabric, like the sun in the picture, you see the original thread color before colorizing, probably by color dipping the thread.

People with better/wider color perception often have more variety in yellows and thus can see gold much better than others. With lower/narrow color perception things that look dark gold or dark yellow will just look black to them in most cases. Those who see the dress as white and gold or light blue/white and dark gold have better color perception and can see the difference between very slight change in color hue better than others.

So to simplify if you take a blue sheet or anything thin and hold it to the sun it will lose more of its color the thinner the fabric is because there is less paint on the fabric "thread" than there is actual "polyester" thread. The color of the paint is just 35% or lower of the polyester thread mass and when sunlight pass through it and washes the color out the only color you will see is the 65% polyester true color (you normaly don't see) blended with the 35% (black/blue) paint. This makes sense because it looks almsot 35% black and 65% gold to me in the picture, and 80% white and 20% blue.

People who see more white and gold have better accuracy for correctly working with colors for online media for tv and entertainment and any art with paint as the important factor.

Some say if you have brown eyes you have less light coming into the eye and thus things look darker than if you have light blue eyes also, but don't know if this is true, could also be an additional factor.

[TheNikki]

I see white and gold. I was actually very surprised that the theory was that naturally larger pupils could mean you're more likely to see it as blue and black. My pupils are huge, always been. Like your dilated pupils are my normal pupils and still I see white and gold and always have.

[Jacknoham]

if you use the color picker thingy that copies the color, it’s gold

[Will]

I saw white and gold. To me it looks like there is a very warm light source from behind the dress, meaning the dress is in shadow, or back light. Being in the shadow makes it appear a bit colder because it would have received less warm light, making it blue-ish. However, I understand the argument of those who saw black and blue. If you perceive this dress as under the warm light, as opposed to being back lit, then it would have been blue and black. I think the tricky part is that there appears to be a mirror in the background reflecting the light source. Those who perceive the dress being backlit would say white and gold, and those who perceive it being in the light would see black and blue. Disclaimer: just my hypothesis, no data to report on that.

[sunnyshien]

I have always seen the dress as light blue and gold/brown/olive (weird mix). I love that you experimented with dialating your pupils. I thought color is also a subjective & cultural experience. Another factor: screens (computer / tablet / phone -and even browser-) show colors differently. Finally I wonder: could sensory processing sensitivity play a role in the detection of colors / making a color correction? Anyway, great food for thought. Thank you for sharing!

[astrinymris]

I think the critical question scientists *didn't* ask participants is, "Where is this dress?" Because when I saw it, I thought the photo was taken in a stand alone shop or strip mall, so I saw the bright area to the right as a window to a sunny outdoors, with the dress hanging in relative shadow. In other words, I was color-correcting for daylight, which usually is "cooler" than indoor lighting.

But apparently this picture was taken in a shopping mall, under artificial light, with a nearby mirror reflecting light. I think people who interpreted the setting this way thus "saw" the dress as an overexposed blue and black dress, whereas those who thought the bright area was a window saw a shadowed white and gold dress.

This makes me wonder if the "smaller pupils" were a sign of people who spent more time outdoors. Or maybe their pupils contracted slightly in conditioned response to perceived sunlight, while those who saw the dress as in a windowless mall store didn't. Sorting participants by whether they lived in a rural or urban area might have shown a correlation.

Maybe. I'm not an optometrist, nor do I even play one on TV. I'm just layperson with an interest in both physical and social science. 🙂