I don’t think it’s really black and white, in my case inside locations are usually dimly lit, and can seem B&W. Although once outside the colors are, as they’ve said before, even better than real life 
They surely seem sharper and crisper.
I wonder… Could it be cause there isn’t any pollution in dreamland
my grandma is always like “i had the most horrible dream about a blood red snake, the color was so VIVID!” and i’m like… “… so?” and she’s shocked that I dream in color.
I think it is 100% rooted to B&W photographs, movies, tv, etc… I mean… what we expose ourselves to daily for huge quanitties of time leaks into our dreams, most assuredly… when something so amazing as pictures, movies, and tv, came to be… I bet they permeated a huge majority of everyone’s dream content for some time to come.
The only B&W dream I ever had was a dream of Alfred Hitchcok, being inside one of his tv shows or something… so I firmly agree with this theory.
I also dream in color in NREM… I can validate this by lingering hypnagogic hallucinations upon startling awake (happens every night)… i can’t think of one that’s ever been in B&W… usually I find myself staring at a slowly fading away desk, street, location, bridge, tv screen (HENCE BLACK AND WHITE FOR OLDER PEOPLE!), computer screen… product… etc.
Besides, my inner eye visions always have dazzling color… I just recalled a fragmented dream memory, perhaps today, of some really vividly beautiful dark purplish blue… I remember that I was trying to describe it to some DC or to myself even… it was mainly just inner eye vision stuff.
Very pretty.
I don’t know what some of you mean by “intense” color though… I dream the way I normally see… and I dont’ normally see any “intense” colors, but then again my eyesight sucks a lot… I recall one LD though where everything was exceptionally sharp and beautiful… I saw a feather floating in the sky and some sort of light shimmered off of it, and it just felt so intense, sharp, otherwordly… like I must have had perfect 20/20 or better vision.
Considering how much I dream about tv and movies and computer I can completely understand most people with poor dream recall believing that they only dream in B&W… afterall nightmares are likely to be stemmed from movie content than about anything else I can think of (for me, aside from phobias)
I also can assert that I used to dream in color before I was capable of lucid dreaming as a child.
back onto NREM dreams briefly, I thought I was inside one the other day, and almost was aware of a “shift” to REM, as i was no longer so bound to my bed, the activities I were doing did not require much immobility/sleep themes, my friend butted in for no reason wanting to talk to me, I got dragged out into more abstract and weird scenes…
where as before that, everything was at least semi-real… I think NREM dreams are way more realistic than REM dreams, becuase NREM tends to deal with memories, learning, going over familiar processes/neural pathways, etc.
REM … tends to deal with the unconscious and all it’s crazy symbolism and whatnot… as far as I can gather.
But I don’t know I at the time told the girl I was with (felt like an SD) that “i must have just entered REM” and I told my friend he could talk to me later, but that I was clearly busy right now.
Before I started practicing LD all of my dreams where in black and white, but I think that this, for me, was mainly because they weren’t as vivid and because I didn’t remeber them as well. Now they are always in colors etc.
I’m not sure that all the reports about colors in dreams are true. If the dream is not lucid and you pay no special attention to colors and have no photographic memory, you won’t be able to say for sure if there were colors in your dream or not. If you remember there were trees in you dream you will do one of two things. On the one hand, you can say that, as you did not notice anything strange in those trees, they must have been green. On the other hand, you can say that, as you don’t remember that they were extremely green, they must have been black and white. As for me, I can only remember several dreams which were definitely colored and only one dream (a short WILD) which was definitely b/w (or, more exactly, black/silver). About the rest I can only make suppositions with various probabilities.
By the way, about colored OBE: that silvery dream was extremely like a small OBE, and it was not colored. Well, I don’t know if astral bodies can see colors at night…
But I must say people can ignore strange colors even in real life. Once, when I was at college, all the computers were replaced, but I paid no attention to the fact that I see grayscale instead colors for several hours. I only noticed it when I tried to run Norton Commander and saw the background was not dark blue, but black. Before that I had been working in Dos Navigator – similar program with milder colors and better support of grayscale monitors. If I had not seen good old NC and if I had been asked soon after that, what colors DN had had, I would probably have said the background had been green and the letters yellow, and so on. In a dream you notice even less than in real life.
I also don’t think it is possible to wake up in a dream only because you notice something strange in colors, unless you choose it as a DS or read this topic every day . Our dreams are in the end the things we expect to see. If you see a gray rose, you won’t necessary become lucid. It is more likely that it will become red next moment and you forget about this “temporary illusion». Or you will get a thrilling story about evil power stealing colors.
Pretty much everybody, to some extent, has a photographic memory.
Why can’t it be “possible”? You can become lucid from anything.
i totally agree w/ ilana about not being able to remember if a dream was color or not after you woke up. i can honestly say that i don’t remember a single dream in which i can be certain whether it was in color or not. i just didn’t think about that at the time and if i was going to try to make a definate decision on whether a dream was colored of not after it was over i would probably fill in the blanks for what i don’t remember so info would not be accurate. another thing i think is intersting is that maybe instead of dreams being influence by tv and movies maybe the way we remember them is influenced by it. if people who watch black and white movies all the time try to fill in the blanks when asked whether they dream in color or not and they think of their dreams like a movie then they will most likely relate it to a movie and say that their dreams are black and white. i’m not saying that dreams aren’t influenced by tv and movies also but this could be another part of it. about black and white dreams ONLY occuring in non-REM dreams i would have to disagree because if those older people’s memory was correct and they did really dream black and white most of the time does that mean that almost all their dreams are NREM? i’m not discounting the fact that maybe all NREM dreams are black and white but REM dreams have to on occasion be black and white as well depending on a lot of things.
Well, it was just a bad formulation. 
I just wanted to say that strange colors are not the most frequent cause of spontaneous getting lucidity…
Colorblind people would always dream in black & white wouldnt they? So it is possible
I know that i dream in colour, i remember it in detail.
Maybe it has somthing to do with the times, back in those days things were less complicated for many people.
i wonder what would happen if the durvay was done scientificly in different cultures?
I always dream in color. I do not ever remember dreaming in b&w.
Someone proposed a theory a while ago that basically suggested all dreams were black & white, and we subconsciously fill in the color retrospectively when we think back over them. I guess it’s a reasonable theory, but I’ve had a few experiences that led me to believe otherwise. For example, I recall a dream not so long ago in which I had to locate these magical crystals of various colors. I distinctively recall staring at the items, mesmerized by the brightness of their florescent glow. On other occasions I’ve had similar dreams in which color has played a significant role, or has at least been strikingly evident.
Of course, none of this applies in a lucid dream. That idea has been rigorously tested many times before. 
I remember reading a theory on this site I think. The theory was that back before there was color tv most people dreamed in black and white and then when color TV was invented people started to dream in color( there was some sort of study done about this). [I really hate to quote studies] Anyway, this really does not make much sense to me. I just do not see how color or B&W TV would effect color in dreams.
I know that jeff had a theory that NREM dreams are in B&W.
I think it is just another thing that varies from person to person. Some people dream in color, others in B&W, and of course some have a little of both. (Just my opinion)
Milod: look at page one of this thread and you will find the theory
i find that theory way too hard to belive, when i am lucid if i were to have black and white dreams i would notice it, but i specificly recall the colour and looking at things and seeing the colour.
there is another topic where jeff says that he dreams in b/w when he is in nrem sleep (non rem sleep) its really interesting reading his theories on the topic, he says that the b/w dreams in nrem are different, harder to control but easier to stay in because he belives that the nrem occurs in a deeper stage of sleep and so more stages must be crossed to wake.
jeff stays concious through all his stages of sleep (please correct me if im worng anyone) if this is possible we could all spend the whole nights dreaming, somtimes in b/w and other times in colour.
Yes, it is my understanding that jeff stays conscious through all stages of sleep. Yes I believe it is possible to do. I have not achieved this yet, but I am working on it. I have a feeling that I am making it harder on myself than I should Anyway, I do not know if all NREM dreams are in black and white or not. I have had lucid dreams that, in theory, should have been NREM and yet they were in full color and no more difficult to control than rem dreams.
When I was a child, my parents TV was B&W and I had had dreams in B&W. Now, I dream in color.
I agree. Before I read this article, I was already pretty sure that dreams in B&W in 60’s and later were because of old B&W TVs and movies.
up until i was 11 my TV in my room was black and white. I don’t remember having any dreams in black and white however.
My father on the other hand has never had a dream in colour that he can remember.
Milod: Are you sure that this was in NREM sleep? IMO its just that the time is going VERY fast when you are conscious in NREM…
or IF you were dreaming in NREM, maybe you just remember them in Black and White…
Im just comming up with suggestions here
Yes nrem dreams are in black and white and i finally figured out why excactly that is the case!
like with all things its quite simple.
In rem sleep our neurotransmittor acetylcholine becomes extremely active.
And serotonin is blocked then.
In non rem sleep thats visa versa and acetylcholine is a memory transmittor. A full colour memory image is not possible in nonrem sleep because your memory transmittor is less active then in rem sleep.
Yes i had an eeg machine and i did many experiments and nrem sleep dreams are in black and white and all rem sleep dreams were always in colour.
I did tests like in a black and white dream wake myself and then look what the eeg machine had recorded and that showed with black and white always a nrem recording. The same done at a colour dream always was recorded as rem sleep.
But now i understand its the transsition of neurotransmittors that are different in nrem and rem sleep that do the trick for colour dreams or black and white dreams, witch is quite logic also.
jeff
I am not sure they were in NREM sleep at all. I was saying that the dreams I was having should have ( theoretically ) been in NREM and were in color.