Why Do We Dream in Color?
Last night my dream was black and white with splashes of red in it. I woke up and wondered at the symbolism from it. Obviously, if you’ve been here before you know I’m a trauma survivor that puts a lot of weight into my dreams. At night, when the world grows quiet, I believe that our minds become painters. They mix memory and metaphor with brushstrokes of emotion and splashes of color.
The canvas isn’t normally black and white for me, it’s technicolor.
There are scarlet doors, or lavender colored oceans, sometimes emerald green skies, or eyes the color of ash or fire or something that doesn’t exist in waking life. We dream in color most of the time…but why?
What evolutionary purpose is there for coral sunsets or golden wolves that talk and give you advice? What does it mean when a brain, in darkness, chooses to drape its visions in hues it has seen only by daylight?
Turns out, the answer lies in neuroscience and psychology, with a little dash of mystery behind why we dream in color.
Colorless Dreams
I told you that my black and white dream was what inspired this post, and when I first looked into it, apparently it wasn’t always assumed that dreams were vibrant and colorful. In fact, up until the 1950s, many researchers and philosophers believed that dreams were mostly black and white.
And it actually wasn’t entirely untrue…many participants in early dream studies claimed to only see in grayscale. But the thing is, this was more likely than not a cultural artifact.
During that era, people consumed black-and-white media. Movies, the TV, newspapers, most of their ads, almost everything they saw in their waking life was in grayscale. So their mental imagery (even in dreams) followed suit. As color television became more and more popular though, people started reporting color dreams more frequently.
For a moment that made me wonder if our dreams are more reflective of our environment than I had thought? Do they mirror media as much as memory?
The answer frustratingly, like most things in the brain, is yes…and also no.
How the Brain Processes Color
Color is a construct. We don’t see color, we perceive it. The cones in our eyes respond to wavelengths of light, and the brain dutifully translates those signals into color experiences.
So there’s no "red" out there…just light bouncing at a particular frequency that our brains have told us is the color red.
The brain’s visual cortex (specifically area V4 if that means anything to you) is apparently deeply involved in color processing. When we dream, V4 lights up just like it does when we’re awake. So when we dream in color, it could be a replay of the machinery we use during the day being lightly primed.
But dreams aren’t just replays of our day, they’re reconstructions mixed with emotional collages and symbolic stage plays. Which is also why color in dreams can feel even more vivid than color in reality. I know typically, my dreams are bright in color in comparison to my day to day life.
A red dress in a dream might signal power, lust, danger, or defiance, while a blue room might feel cold, calming, or lonely. A yellow bird could mean freedom, caution, or happiness.
Dreams aren’t literal and color becomes our emotion. This is where the psychology of dreams deepens, so stay with me. Our brains don’t just generate color…they assign meaning to it. Some researchers believe that dream color reflects our moods, that the brain uses visual metaphor to process trauma or ways to show you the unspeakable.
So, that purple sky wasn’t just aesthetic, it was grief, trying to soften itself into something beautiful.
What the Research Says
In 2001, researchers Kelly, Schwitzgebel, and Lazarev at the University of California conducted a study of 124 university students and found that fewer than 20% reported “rarely or never” seeing color in their dreams, which is a striking contrast to dream surveys from the 1940s, when black-and-white dreams were reported way more frequently.
A recent 2024 report in The Washington Post summarizing modern dream research showed that most people say they dream in color about half the time, while purely grayscale dreams appear to make up only about 10% of reported experiences today, reinforcing that dramatic shift from the mid-20th century patterns.
But here’s where things get shaken up a bit more: in a demographic review summarized by DreamStudies.org, people who grew up watching black-and-white television (particularly older adults) are still significantly more likely to report black-and-white dreams even today, working to prove that early media exposure was shaping the palette of the dreaming mind.
Interestingly enough, this sort of implies that dream color isn’t fixed or universal at all. Instead it seems almost learned or remembered. Dream colors are shaped by the media we consume and the worlds we inhabit in our waking lives.
Researchers also noted that the colors people recall in dreams tend to be vivid and saturated, often more intense than in waking life, although there’s no definitive list of the “most common” tones. While the idea that artists or highly visual thinkers dream in more color isn’t backed by large peer-reviewed studies, smaller surveys and anecdotal reports hint that people with strong visual imagination may experience richer dream imagery.
So dream color seems to rise from a mix of memory, emotion, personal history, as well as the odd ways the brain fills in the dark with its own palette. Your brain is a neural painter working in a medium only you will ever see.
Do Blind People Dream in Color?
It depends.
Those who lost their sight later in life often report color dreams, but those who were born blind? They don’t dream in images at all, their dreams are made of sound, texture, and scent.
Which is poetic in its own right and might desire its own blog post.
Dreams aren’t just visual experiences, they’re sensory and whole-body memory. They’re the nervous system rehearsing, healing, and reaching. For those of us who do see in our sleep, color is one of the tools the brain uses to make meaning.
Some argue that dream color is random, that it means nothing, but we know that dreams help us consolidate memory, process emotion, and even in creative problem-solving. So when your brain shows you a crimson wave or a forest of glowing teal leaves…maybe it’s not random. It could be the poetry of your neurons speaking in some higher metaphor. It’s also possible that like all art, dreams exist somewhere between interpretation and instinct.
They don’t have to mean something to be something.
Related Reads:
Just 20 Minutes of Sunlight a Day Stimulates Over 200 Antimicrobial Peptides
Dream Hackers: The Science of Lucid Dreaming and the Tech Trying to Control Our Sleep
So Why Do We Dream in Color?
The mind is a storyteller and it remembers in tones, not just words. Because we live in color…and color, like memory, is emotional.
We dream in color because our brains are built not only to survive, but to make sense of beauty even in the dark.
