Thread: Coloured dreams

I have seen people mention that their dreams lack colors a few times now, but whoever is saying that dreams in general are colorless is wrong.
I have recalled thousands of both lucid and non-lucid dreams in my life, and I cannot recall a single one that was colorless.
In fact some dreams have had colors so vivid and strong that the human eye couldn't possibly see them.

No idea how one would prove it one way or another, but I had a lucid dream once where everything started out black and white, which made me mad because they were always in color before. I was thinking that during the actual lucid dream, and not after. So I used my hands as a paintbrush and began coloring my surroundings lol. It was a really crappy effort, so I just yelled 'more clarity' and everything became colorful and beautiful.

Interesting question though.

I agree that my dream lacks colour but they are not colourless. Although I'm not sure what colours I dreamt of, but a black and white dream doesn't fit into my dream recall.

well you don't actually see the color anyway, and most people think they dream in color, so if the colors are made up anyway...what is the difference?

Originally Posted by randosity

well you don't actually see the color anyway, and most people think they dream in color, so if the colors are made up anyway...what is the difference?

touché.

Originally Posted by randosity

well you don't actually see the color anyway, and most people think they dream in color, so if the colors are made up anyway...what is the difference?

That is a good point, although I suppose what we perceive as 'colour', is the brain's interpretation of a wavelength of light. In a dream there is no physical light, but your brain (assuming it is possible to dream in colour), still wholeheartedly believes that there is light, and so perception of colour should exist. For the same reason that you do not truly see shapes in dreams, as there is no physical light, although during the dream, you truly believe that you are seeing shapes... your brain perceives these shapes, and so the image exists in your head.
I'm not sure if I expressed that idea clearly, but I hope so.

Regardlessly, a good point randosity.

Originally Posted by Aurata

I remember hearing that dreams are always colourless, and that we subconsciously add the colour in, while recalling the dream.
However, I have become sceptical. Why would it be impossible for us to hallucinate in colour?

People have all sorts of notions about what is and isn't possible in dream and almost all of them are wrong. I remember someone telling me this when I was a kid and laughing at it because not only because all me dreams where in color, but the colors are almost always extremely vivid. Since then I have had dreams in black and white or sepia, but it usually makes sense to the plot.

It's definitely not impossible to hallucinate in color. All my hallucinatory experiences have been in vivid color and sometimes I've even seen color outside of the red-violet spectrum.

Originally Posted by Aurata

I remember hearing that dreams are always colourless, and that we subconsciously add the colour in, while recalling the dream.
However, I have become sceptical. Why would it be impossible for us to hallucinate in colour? Also, what if the dream was significantly based on the presence of a colour?
Are dreams really colourless? Explain.

People are just chock full of misinformation, so it's very good that you are skeptical, because what you heard is wrong...dreams are not always colorless. In fact, this has been studied pretty thoroughly and the consensus is that most dreams have color. Without a doubt, my dreams and hallucinations are in color...often times very vivid and hyperrealistic color. My hypnagogic hallucinations are very often technicolored.

Research shows that 70 -80% of our dreams contain color. Which is not really that surprising seeing as though we dream as we see the world around us... the sky is blue and the grass is green. It makes sense for color to appear in our dreams.

In the middle of the 20th Century with Freud’s research people generally reported dreams being in back and white. This is an interesting fact, seeing as today most people reportedly dream in color.
However the prevalence early on of black and white dreams is attributed to the influence of black and white media images at that time.

I know for one that I have only ever had one black and white dream and it stands out in my memory because of this fact. My dreams are usually full of color.

Color appears in our dreams in several ways, images can be completely one color or we could view the dream as we naturally see the world around us.
Now days when people refer to their dreams only being in black and white researchers believe this is more a matter of recall than anything else.

According to Bob Hoss M.S. a prolific dream researcher who’s specific focus is color in dreams, not only do we dream in color, but color has as much significance as any other dream symbol within a given dream.

Dream color appears to be symbolic of the emotional state that conjured up the dream images.

As with any dream interpretation color combined with the specific images of a dream will aid in giving you a more in-depth understanding of your dream.

Just like bee’s coming out of a hole in your knee may be a symbol of you feeling like the “bees knees” color combined with a dream image gives more emotional significance to that image.

A blue car for instance will give you more of a sense of harmony, tranquility and a sense of belonging than a car with no color at all.

colour-blind people can dream in colour - which proves things about the top-down nature of perception.
Vision is processed in stages, and in different sections of the visual cortex, so it is certainly possible that the colour processing part is not active in a dream, but I'd expect colourless would be the exception