Do we dream in color or in black and white?

The short answer

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Most people report dreaming in color. But some, especially older adults who grew up watching black and white TV and movies, report more dreams in shades of gray. Research suggests that the kind of images we live with may influence what we remember of our dreams, and perhaps the dream itself.

There is one more detail that changes everything: many people simply do not pay attention to color and quickly forget that kind of detail. Dreaming "without color" may often just mean not remembering the color. To understand why we forget, see why we forget dreams.

Read also: Why we dream and Dream journal: how to keep one.

What research observed

In 2008, psychologist Eva Murzyn wanted to know whether differences in reported dream color came from the influence of black and white media or from problems of method (for example, asking people from memory instead of asking for a daily record). She compared two age groups with different media experiences: one that had access to black and white TV and film before the color versions, and another that never lived with that kind of media.

The result: those who had contact with black and white media before color reported more dreams in shades of gray than those without that exposure. And there was no difference between what people answered in the questionnaire and what they wrote in the diary, which means it was not just an effect of the way the question was asked. The author also found differences between the groups in how well they remembered color dreams and black and white dreams, which raises the possibility that truly colorless dreams happen only in people who have had experience with black and white media.

Source: Murzyn, Do we only dream in colour?, Consciousness and Cognition, 2008.

Why people once believed we dreamed in black and white

For part of the 20th century, the idea that dreams were in black and white was quite widespread. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel wrote an entire paper with a question in its title: why did we think we dreamed in black and white? The paper discusses how opinion on the subject changed over time and what that reveals about how much we can trust reports of our own dreams.

The question is a good one because it points to a real problem: nobody can "film" a dream. All we have is the memory, told after waking, and it can be influenced by what we expect to find, by the images of the time and by the way the question is asked. When the culture said dreams were gray, more people remembered them that way.

Source: Schwitzgebel, Why did we think we dreamed in black and white?, 2002.

See also: Do animals dream? What science already knows and Dreaming about a shadow figure.

Why so many people cannot tell the color of their dream

Think of the last conversation you had on the street. Do you remember the color of the other person's shoes? Probably not, and yet you saw those shoes in color. Something similar happens with dreams: attention goes to the plot, to who was there and to the emotion. Color only stays in memory when it plays a role in the scene, like the red dress that caught your eye or a very blue sea.

On top of that, dream memory is fragile and fades within minutes of waking. A detail like color, which did not weigh on the story, vanishes easily. In the 1950s, William Dement and Edward Wolpert woke volunteers during REM sleep, the rapid eye movement stage, to collect reports while they were still fresh. That is the care research needs to take, and that almost nobody takes at home: in the morning rush, often all that is left is a general feeling.

And waking life gets into dreams, as the continuity hypothesis of Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann proposes: people who work with color, who paint, take photographs or design clothes tend to notice it more, both awake and asleep.

Sources: Dement and Wolpert, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1958; Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003.

How to pay attention to the color of your dreams

• Write it down right after waking: before your phone, write the scene and add one line just for colors, if you remember any.
• Ask yourself on purpose: "what color was it?" Sometimes the answer comes; sometimes the color simply did not stay.
• Do not force it: if the color did not come, write "I don't know." Making it up later spoils the record.
• Compare over a few weeks: a dream journal shows whether color appears more in certain kinds of dreams, such as the more emotional ones.

People who train this attention sometimes start noticing other details as well, and some use it as a gateway to lucid dreaming.

What psychology, symbols and popular belief say about colors

In psychology. Freud's method does not give a ready-made meaning for each color: it asks the person what that detail reminds them of. The red of a car might point to a relative, an argument or an ad seen the day before. The Jungian tradition goes the same way when it says that the symbols in a dream are personal.

In symbols. A Dictionary of Symbols by Chevalier and Gheerbrant includes colors among the themes it studies, and shows that the meaning of each one varies a great deal from culture to culture: white, for example, is linked to peace in many places and to mourning in others. Awake, we also give weight to colors, as shown in what your favorite color may say about you and why the sky is blue.

In popular belief. O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book by L. P. Baçan, has an entry for "color": in life, victory; in love, reconciliation. In popular reading, red is usually linked to passion, blue to calm and white to peace, and a dream full of colors to a good phase. If the scene had a rainbow, there is an article just for that. These are interpretations from tradition, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols; L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014.