this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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Can someone who sees the dress as black and blue (on the original image ) try to explain to me what leads their brain to believe that the light source is blasting the dress?
To me, background seem to be very bright, and also the clothes that are just behind the dress seems to be illuminated, thus leading my brain to think that the dress is in front of the light source (dress would be in the shade), so the logic that the dress color looks altered due to bright light just doesn't compute in my brain.
I'm betting that this is not how dress would look in real life and that crappy camera has a lot to do with how that image turned out.
But I will never understand how people can look at it and say that it's black and blue, because I never managed to see it as such.
Light bounces. If there’s a white/light coloured or reflective surface behind the camera, it will bounce the colour of the ambient light onto the dress, especially as overexposed as the photo is. What confuses me is where people who see the dress as white think the blue tint is coming from. Shadows don’t work like that.
You're right that the dress is shadowed, otherwise the blue would be deeper. There's a black and white garment just behind it to the left, so for the foreground dress to also be white the shadowing would have to be largely blue, like in the OP illustration.
It doesn't? The light looks like it's behind it from the window or whatever. With a little bit of the neck more illuminated more from above as if from a light bulb.
I'm also in team gold and white. Just like you, my brain perceived the source of light is from the back and part of the dress that I saw is shaded.
What helped me see the dress as black and blue is trying to imagine a zoomed out image of this photo where the dress in uncropped, then force myself to believe that it is a brightly lit clothing shop. Also I tried to see the background as a mirror that reflect the light, so my brain can finally process that the lighting is not exclusively from behind the dress.
You just made me manage to see it in black and blue! Wow! Never spent too much time on it but always saw it gold+white.
Your screen on your phone is RGB. Red Green Blue pixels. There is no yellow light ever being sent to your eyes. So if you were to look at a yellow square on your phone the pixels are RGB in a mix convincing your brain it is yellow.
So when you get a blue dress with warm yellow light, the pixels on your phone tries to convey that bit of yellow
Different devices will show it more or less.
If you printed out the picture there would be no illusion.
Why would this be true?
They're saying screens use RGB which has no yellow, directly.
Printing uses CMYK which can print yellow, directly.
I mean even then it depends on the lighting in the room. If you have LED lightbulbs there is still no “actually yellow” light.
Also your eyes don’t care.
A printed version of the picture will still maintain the illusion. I’ve actually seen a variant of this illusion printed in a book before.