The Dress...

This past week the internet has been raging over the question is the dress white and gold or is it blue and black. Whilst this dress is not actually related to medicine, I wanted to write about the true colour of this dress and the reason behind why so many people see different colours of it, in order to hopefully end some disputes. 

The divide in whether the colour of the dress is black and blue or white and gold, is due to colour constancy phenomenon. "Colour constancy is a part of the visual perception system which allows people to perceive colour in a variety of conditions, and to see some consistency in the colour." It allows the brain to make assumptions on colour due to it's surroundings.


The photo of the dress is so close up that the surroundings are extremely ambiguous, this in turn leads to the brain having to make assumptions on the surroundings of the dress. 

White and gold?

If you were to perceive the dress as white and gold, then your brain would be interpreting the dress in a blue lite room, i.e. the dress is near a window, so the blue sky casts blue light. This would then allow the brain to decided that the dress appears blue due to the sky, so obviously it's original colour would be white. 


Blue and Black?

Here the brain thinks that the dress is under artificial light, yellow light, light from a lamp for example. This would allow the brain to decide that the gold in the dress is in fact a reflection off the black due to the lighting, and the blue colour would be unaffected.




Therefore, the dispute in colour is completely down to individual perception, the photo is so ambiguous that it is really up to our brain how we perceive the dress, by how the brain interprets the world around us. 




However, the dress is in fact blue and black. 

For more information I recommend these websites:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150302134235.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-color-constancy.htm#didyouknowout

and of course the asapscience Youtube channel, who were the inspiration behind this post