What Color Is This Dress Really? [PHOTOS]

This dress is more infamous right now than the Kardashians! Nobody can agree on what color it really is. Some people see it as a blue and black dress and others see it as white and gold. What colors do you see?

When I first look at it I see a tan and white dress, but if I stare at it long enough and maybe cross my eyes it turns blue and blackish. But - what if I told you that we are all wrong and that it is really tan and blue?

It is actually a really cool eye experiment - because it all depends on how long you look and where you look at the picture.

To refresh your eyes and see it as the original you may need to look away or refresh the page...

Here is where it gets even more interesting and maybe contains an explanation as to why people see it so differently. The dress colors are almost exact opposites on the color scale. Meaning if you negative color the image the colors switch.

Here’s a fancy sciency sounding explanation for what’s happening here:

Your eyes have retinas, the things that let you interpret color. There’s rods (round things) and cones (that stick out) — which is what gives your eye a textured appearance in the colored part. The “cones” see color. The “rods” see shade, like black, white and grey.

Cones only work when enough light passes through, so while some may see the fabric as white, someone else may see it as blue.

There are three cones – small, medium and large. They are blue sensitive, green sensitive and red sensitive.

As for the black bit, it’s called additive mixing. Blue, green and red are the main colors for additive mixing. This is where it gets really tricky. Subtractive mixing, such as with paint, means the more colors you add, the murkier it gets until it’s black. ADDITIVE mixing, when you add the three colors eyes see best – red, green and blue (not to be confused with primary colors red, blue and yellow) it makes pure white.

See a blue and black dress?: Your retina’s cones are more high functioning, and this results in your eyes doing subtractive mixing.

See a white and gold dress?: Our eyes don’t work well in dim light so our retinas rods see white, and this makes them less light sensitive, causing additive mixing (that of green and red) to make gold.”

Whatever. I don't care what you say I still see a tan and white dress. But if you need real proof then here’s a product shot of the dress found on Amazon (and also if you want to be really entertained then read the new product reviews for this dress).

Truth time: What color of dress do you see?