You may have noticed that people online are going insane debating the colour of this dress today, as it turns out no one can agree whether it’s white and gold, black and blue or black and gold. It’s like one of those stoner debates about whether we all see ‘blue’ the same way. Is one man’s blue another man’s yellow? Etc. We’ll never really know for sure just like we may never know the real colour of this dress:

Image VIA

An example of people losing their minds over this:

Anyway, it looks 100% blue and black to me but according to science the picture is actually an optical illusion so that’s why no one can seem to agree:

Our brains decide what colour something is by taking in all the light from that object and ‘throwing away’ the light from surrounding objects.

So, you see the colour of, say, a dress in relation to the colours of objects surrounding it.

In the photo that’s driving everyone mad, the surrounding colours are so jumbled that our brains can’t actually determine what colour the dress is.

Those who see the surrounding colours as dark are more likely to see the blue in the dress as white, and the black lace as gold.

There you go — it’s all down to how each individual sees and processes colour. None of us are wrong; all of us are right. Settled.

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