Is the dress blue and black or white and gold? Port Douglas weighs in

Last updated: 03/03/2015, 15:00:15 (AEST)

Tuesday March 3 2015, 3:20pm

Is it blue and black or white and gold?

This question’s been on everyone’s lips for the past week as a photo of a single dress has swept the internet, dividing offices and friendships everywhere.

It's more pervasive than Holden vs Commodore, Team Edward vs Team Jacob, even crunching vs folding toilet paper.

By now, most people are sick of it.

But no matter what colour you see it as or how tired you are of the endless debates over it, the dress has become a fascinating insight into both the world of optical science and viral internet content.

Never before has a single image become a meme and spread so far and so rapidly.

Within 24 hours, #thedress had over 1.2 million tweets about it, with #whiteandgold beating out #blackandblue by a ratio of 3-1.

Most optical experts argue that a feature of human vision called ‘colour consistency’ is responsible for the differing perceptions of the dress.

Colours can appear to change under different-coloured light.

If people viewing the photo assume the light hitting the dress is white, they will perceive the dress as blue and black.

If they perceive the light as blue, the dress will appear white and gold to them.

Various advertising agencies have already jumped on the meme.

Newsport hit the street in Port Douglas to ask a few locals about what they thought each colour was.

Most responded with groans of frustration because the dress had been clogging up their Facebook newsfeeds all weekend, but the variety in colour perception remained.

Check out their responses below.

(By the way, in real life, the dress looks BLUE AND BLACK to everyone.)

What do you see when you look at that image? Leave a comment below.

Kelly Stevenson (left) and Loren Morely (centre) at Quicksilver Port Douglas see the dress as blue and black but their colleague Erin Smith (right) sees it as white and gold. “It’s blue and black, I’ve always seen it as blue and black but everyone sees something different,” Kelly said. “I can’t understand it at all.”

At Salsa Restaurant and Bar, barman PJ Hanly sees the dress as blue with gold trim, but said it was ‘purple and gray’ the last time he saw the image. “It’s the weirdest thing,” PJ said.

At the Courthouse Hotel, the difference in perception continues. Carl Henson (left) sees the dress, fascinatingly, as white and green, while Mark Taylor, who he works beside in the kitchen, is in the white gold camp.

Paws and Claws president Michael Kerr sees it as blue and black.