So, what's the truth? And why does it seem that there are two, or even three options of colours when looking at the dress?

Basically, it's all down to science. For starters, it's important to consider the way in which our brains interpret different colours.

When you see a “white shirt bathed in yellow sun, for instance, it needs to subtract the yellowness of the sun so that it can see the whiteness of the shirt – and it normally does”, writes Andrew Griffin for the Independent.

But, due to the confusing nature of the background in the picture, how you view the light surrounding the dress will determine what colour you see it as.

Some people look at the dress and get rid of the blue part because they see the surrounding light as nighttime, so they see it as gold and white.

Others get rid of the gold part because they see the surrounding light as a sunny day, so they see it as blue and black.

Which is why different people can see different colours. In fact, you might see the dress one way earlier on today, and come back to it later and see it as a totally different colour.

Many people have even tried to create helpful images, with the gradients of colours pictured, to help people decide on the colour of the dress.

Wired magazine spoke to Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, who said: “Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant [the light] and extract information about the actual reflectance [the dress]. But I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.” (Neitz sees white-and-gold.)

However, despite all this useful scientific explanation, that doesn't get around the fact that everyone is losing their minds over what colour they see dress.

Why the whole internet is talking about one dress