What Color Do You See?

The Jacket

One year after the controversy of the dress, now comes the jacket. A Tumblr user posted the photo and captioned, “I hate to make a new blue/black white/gold dress meme, but my friend has this jacket and she says it’s white and blue, but I see black and brown. Please tell me what you see.”

Everyone is seeing the jacket three different ways: blue and white, green and gold, or black and brown. The official color of the jacket is blue and white says the owner.

The Dress

Just one year ago, the dress was the biggest viral meme ever. People could not agree if the dress was either white and gold or blue and black. The owner of the dress confirmed that is was black and blue, but that still did not stop people from arguing about it.

The Science Behind It

So if the dress or jacket is just one color, why do so many people see different colors? The way your brain can distinguish between colors in bright light or dark is interesting. Light hits the retina at the back of the eye at differing wavelengths. Wavelengths get longer as they move through violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. However, when the brain interprets these wavelengths as color it is also doing something very clever. It is also working out how illuminated the color is by the light around it and subtracting that from the ‘real’ color.

Take a look at this photo. It looks like the squares are darker because of the shadow the cylinder makes, but they are actually the same color.

What Color Do You See?

50% of people saw green and gold, followed by blue and white with 32%, then 7% of people saw black and brown. I personally saw blue & white.

What do you see?