Here’s how the science works

IT may have baffled millions, but it seems there is a simple explanation for this phenomenon.

The brain has to take into account the amount of daylight surrounding an object to work out what colour it really is. But this photograph makes it unclear whether the dress is surrounded by sunshine or fading light.

If your brain decides the dress is bathed in brilliant sunshine, then it subtracts the yellowness of the sun and you end up seeing a dark blue and black dress. But if it thinks the light is fading, it will remove blue-black from the image and tell you that the dress is actually bright white and gold.

The decision can be influenced by how far away you are from the photo, your viewing angle and what you saw immediately beforehand. And the structure of the eye will mean that different people let in varying amounts of light – providing, in this case, dramatically different results.