Overall, researchers and study participants agreed that black and white dreams were the norm, and rare cases of coloured dreams were dubbed 'Technicolor' dreams (Calef, 1954, Hall, 1951), highlighting their perceived artificiality. This tendency to report black and white dreams suddenly disappeared in the 1960's.
When awakened while dreaming, people rend to report that their dreams contained vivid colors seventy percent of the time and vague color 13 percent of the time, but outside of scientific studies, only 25 to 29 percent of people say that they dream in color. So many of us do dream in color but don't properly remember.
Similarly, colours also stimulate emotions in dreams. Scientific REM studies have proven that we tend to dream in colours but we do not always recall them. The meaning of colours in dreams is not just indicative of the dreamer's emotional state but also one's personality traits.
Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white. But the tides turned in the 60s, and later results suggested that up to 83% of dreams contain some colour.
Over all, 12 percent of people dream entirely in black and white. Go back a half-century, and television's impact on our closed-eye experiences becomes even clearer. In the 1940s, studies showed that three-quarters of Americans, including college students, reported “rarely” or “never” seeing any color in their dreams.
Some blind people see full visual scenes while they dream, like sighted people do. Others see some visual images but not robust scenes. Others yet do not have a visual component to their dreams at all, although some researchers debate the degree to which this is true.
Because humans dream about what they know, people who become colorblind after birth can "see" colors in their dreams, according to "Colour Blindness: Causes and Effects" (Dalton Publishing, 2002).
Do Colorblind People Dream in Color? As we have learned, your waking experience dictates your perception of dreams. So, someone who has a red-green color vision defect since birth will dream in the same colorblind mode.
Kahn, Dement, Fisher, and Barmack (1962) wrote that “with careful interrogation close to the time of dreaming, color was found to be present in 82.7% of the dreams” and Herman, Roffwarg, and Tauber (1968) discovered that coloured dreaming was reported after 69% of REM awakenings of their subjects.
Yet many people who have recovered from comas report dreams into which something of the outside world penetrated. Others recall nightmares that seemed to go on and on. Whether they dream or not probably depends on the cause of the coma.
By mid-century, researchers believed that dreams were by default, grayscale. Then in the 1960s things changed again, and researchers began reporting a higher incidence of color in reports of dreaming, and the popular question, “Do you dream in color?” was born.
We all dream each night, whether the dreams are remembered or not. Many Americans are chronically sleep-deprived. It's important to have an understanding of ideal sleep and how our sleeping patterns may impact overall health and wellness. Everyone dreams anywhere from 3 to 6 times each night.
A very small percentage of Americans — just one in 10 — say they always remember their dreams, while an equally small percentage say they never remember them. For most Americans, it's somewhere in between. Women are more likely to report remembering their dreams than men, but there is a larger difference by age.
Berger (1963) found between 40% and 71% of dreams to contain color; Padgham (1975) found about 50%. Snyder (1970) even suggests that all dreams may contain color.
Shared dreams definition
Shared dreaming is the idea that two or more people can share the same dream environment. The degree to which the dream is shared can vary, from simply having common elements or events that happen in each person's dream, to the entire dream being identical.
Not All Dreams Are in Color
In studies in which dreamers have been awakened and asked to select colors that match those in their dreams, people chose soft pastel colors most frequently.
In fact, a number of people are able to experience something called lucid dreaming, and some of them are even able to control certain elements of their nightly dreams.
“Since dreams are thought to primarily occur during REM sleep, the sleep stage when the MCH cells turn on, activation of these cells may prevent the content of a dream from being stored in the hippocampus – consequently, the dream is quickly forgotten.”
Lucid dreaming happens when you're aware that you're dreaming. Often, you can control the dream's storyline and environment. It occurs during REM sleep. When used in therapy, lucid dreaming can help treat conditions like recurring nightmares and PTSD.
Deaf / hard of hearing people and their dreams
In a study titled Waking and Sleeping, researchers investigated people's dreams with hearing loss. After their research, they concluded that people with hearing impairments hear sounds in their dreams.
Yes, shock horror, people with visual impairments do sometimes drink to excess too. Just like anyone.
Total Color Blindness: The most severe and rare form of color deficiency, total color blindness refers to when a person cannot perceive color at all. Affecting approximately 1 in 33,000, their world is seen in grayscale – only black, white, and shades of gray.
If you have complete color blindness, you can't see colors at all. This is also called monochromacy, and it's quite uncommon. Depending on the type, you may also have trouble seeing clearly and you may be more sensitive to light.
The answer, of course, is nothing. Just as blind people do not sense the color black, we do not sense anything at all in place of our lack of sensations for magnetic fields or ultraviolet light.