Young Writers Society

Can't seem to get away from this thing, and after a long conversation about it on chat, we may as well have a poll to decide once and for all!

It's been tricky to avoid, but essentially, what colour is this dress?

Go ahead and duke it out.

I think it's something of a combination, actually, but white and gold fits best. I think it's a greyish-gold and a pale inversion of that gold, a very light blue, in lighting that enhances the appearance of it being blue instead of white. Testing this theory out in GIMP, it appears it checks out, but can anyone else verify?

Also, the gold appears more greyish because it's transparent lace on top of the blue/white underlayer.

(I can see how someone could think it was blue/grey, but black?)

--edit-- checking sources, it appears this is either an elaborate colorizing hoax or someone used a filter on the image that really distorted the color perception. Like I said, I can see how someone could see it as blue in that photo, but I can't see black; just ugh. Why am I thinking this early in the morning.

Apprently it is supposed to be black and blue according to this article and this article the reason it may seem white and gold or blue and back depends on what you were looking at before looking at the picture. Your eyes will perceive to colors differently depending on how they adjusted to the lighting.

This dress looked to me blue and brown so that is why I didn't vote.

The lace is like a very dirty black that's more on the slightly brown side (think Victorian era polluted skies), and nearing the top the brown is kinda more obvious. What I describe as 'brownish-black' other people might see as 'dull gold', though. This is probably the effect the light has on the dress without filters or whatever.

The rest of the dress is pale blue and decidedly /not/ white for me.

This frustrates me, not just because I bet the dress is prettier in gold and white but oh, look at this. The whole thing is dead interesting and it's funny how one dress can cause such a ruckus everywhere. DX

So at first I was convinced it was white and gold, but I find that when I look at just the bottom of the picture, I can see it as blue and black.

I think it should just be based on the color of the dress itself, because some people see blue and gold, blue and brown, etc. i can see why people might be able to see gold, but WHITE?

I see a very pale lilac and gold. >.>

white and brown

I saw white and brown/gold. When I asked my mum and brother (I didn't give them the choices beforehand) they saw blue and black. O.O
I cannot see how they can see a darker color on that!

So our eyes are naturally drawn to colors and those colors have shadows and light thrown on them but light isn't naturally WHITE as a lot of us may know from suddenly getting white light bulbs. The external light is actually more of a yellow which doesn't "drain your skin of color."

One of the ways that artists play with your mind is to use this theory to balance between reality and a fiction. In order to get a highlight on something, you layer colors like yellow, red, and purple beneath whatever color you're trying to create. In doing this, artists have to learn to identify what color is actually there from the shadows and things instead of what the base color is (like the sky is blue).

Basically your brain thinks that the blue in that image is just a result of a shadow, and it is used to discounting that as something White in a shadow.

There is an article about this dress and how to see it both ways here: There are pictures!

umm.. I think thats Blue/white and Gold. I don't think there's Black colour

Sunshine1113 wrote:Apprently it is supposed to be black and blue according to this article and this article the reason it may seem white and gold or blue and back depends on what you were looking at before looking at the picture. Your eyes will perceive to colors differently depending on how they adjusted to the lighting.

I just tested that. I looked at the dress after being on the computer for a bit (so I was looking at a bright screen) and it looked white a gold. Then I covered my eyes for 30 seconds (probably a bit longer then that) and looked at it again and it was blue and black. That's so cool!
But it didn't work for my sister. I wonder why the difference...

Dang it, I already know about this little bug in color theory, how the eyes try to auto adjust to light levels which can totally invert or over expose colors on people.

Real colors found by pulling them out of the dress.



Still see it as brown and white though.