You remember the dress. The one that tore the internet apart back in 2015 because half the world saw white and gold while the other half saw blue and black. Well, it happened again with footwear. Specifically, a photo of a Vans sneaker that launched a million arguments over whether the shoes were pink or gray.
It sounds stupid. How can two people look at the exact same pixels and see completely different colors? Honestly, it's not a glitch in the photo. It’s a glitch in your head.
The image originally surfaced on Facebook before migrating to Twitter and Instagram, showing a retro-style sneaker. Some people swear on their lives the shoe is gray with teal or mint green laces. Others are genuinely baffled because they see a pink shoe with white laces. This isn't just about fashion or personal preference; it’s a masterclass in how human biology interacts with digital photography.
The Science of Why You See Gray or Pink
Your brain is constantly lying to you. It has to. If your eyes reported exactly what they saw without any filtering, the world would look like a chaotic mess of changing colors every time a cloud passed over the sun. This process is called color constancy.
Basically, your brain tries to discount the lighting in a room to find the "true" color of an object. If you take a white piece of paper into a room with a yellow lightbulb, the paper technically reflects yellow light. But you don't think the paper changed color. Your brain just says, "Hey, that's a white paper under yellow light," and moves on.
When it comes to the shoes pink or gray debate, the photo was taken under very specific, poor lighting conditions. The flash was likely too close, or the white balance on the phone was completely out of whack. Because the lighting is ambiguous, your brain has to make an executive decision. If your brain decides the lighting is "cool" or bluish, it subtracts those tones and you see a pink shoe. If your brain assumes the lighting is "warm" or yellowish, it interprets the shoe as gray and the laces as teal.
Dr. Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist at the National Eye Institute, has spent an actual lifetime studying these phenomena. He notes that our internal wiring for color perception is deeply tied to our exposure to daylight versus artificial light. It’s why some people can never "unsee" the gray version once they’ve spotted it, while others are trapped in the pink camp forever.
The Real Color of the Shoe (The Facts)
Let’s kill the mystery. The actual shoe—the physical object sitting in a box somewhere—is pink and white. It is a Vans Old Skool sneaker. The brand doesn't even make that specific model in a gray and teal colorway that looks like the photo.
The person who originally posted the photo, Nicole Coulthard, confirmed that her friend had bought the shoes and they were undeniably pink. The teal tint we see in the photo is a result of a massive color cast. Essentially, the camera’s sensor got confused by the indoor lighting and shifted the entire color spectrum toward the blue/green end.
It’s a perfect storm of bad photography.
You’ve probably seen people try to "fix" the photo in Photoshop. If you adjust the levels to bring the white balance back to a neutral state, the shoe magically transforms into its natural pink state. But for the people who see gray, that digital correction feels like a lie because their internal "auto-correct" is already working overtime.
Why Digital Screens Make the Problem Worse
We aren't looking at these shoes in person. We are looking at them on OLED or LCD screens.
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Every phone has a different color profile. If you're looking at the shoes pink or gray image on an iPhone with "True Tone" turned on, it might look totally different than it does on a cheap laptop screen with a blue-light filter.
Furthermore, our eyes age. As we get older, the lenses in our eyes naturally yellow. This acts like a permanent Instagram filter on your life. A younger person with very clear lenses might be more prone to seeing the pink tones, while an older viewer might lean toward the gray. It's not a hard rule, but biological factors like macular pigment density play a huge role in how we categorize "teal" versus "white."
Beyond the Viral Gimmick: The Fashion Impact
Retailers actually paid attention to this. When the "shoes pink or gray" debate peaked, searches for both colorways spiked on sites like Zappos and ASOS. It proved that controversy is the best marketing.
Pink sneakers have been a staple of "Millennial Pink" culture for years, but the gray/teal combo—even if it was a photographic accident—actually looked good to a lot of people. It led to a surge in demand for muted, minty tones in athletic wear.
Brands like Nike and New Balance have leaned heavily into these ambiguous, "chameleon" colors. They use materials that reflect light differently depending on the angle, purposely playing with the same optical illusions that made the Vans photo go viral. They know that if they can get people arguing about the color of a shoe in the comments section, the algorithm will push that product to millions of more people for free.
How Your Brain Categorizes Light
Think about the last time you were in a grocery store. The meat department usually uses lights with a slight red tint to make the beef look fresher. The produce section uses cool, bright lights to make greens look crisp.
We are manipulated by color every single day.
The shoes pink or gray phenomenon is just a rare moment where the manipulation fails, and we realize that our reality is subjective. When you see gray, you aren't "wrong." Your brain is simply making a different assumption about the environment than mine is.
If you want to see the "other" color, try this:
Look at the photo in a pitch-black room with your screen brightness turned all the way down. Then, look at it outside in direct sunlight. Often, changing the ambient light around your body will force your brain to re-evaluate the light in the photo. You might actually see the shoe "flip" from gray to pink right before your eyes. It's a trippy experience that proves how fragile our perception of truth really is.
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Dealing with the "Left Brain vs. Right Brain" Myth
There was a total lie going around during the height of this craze. You might have seen it. A post claimed that if you see pink, you’re "right-brained" and creative, and if you see gray, you’re "left-brained" and analytical.
That is complete nonsense.
There is zero scientific evidence linking color constancy or optical illusions to personality traits or brain dominance. The "left-brain/right-brain" theory itself is largely a myth in the way it's commonly understood. Seeing pink or gray is a matter of photoreceptors and neural processing in the visual cortex, not whether you’re good at math or painting.
Don't let a Facebook meme tell you your personality based on a poorly lit photo of a sneaker.
Actionable Steps for Understanding Color in Your Life
If this debate has taught us anything, it’s that we can’t always trust our eyes—especially when shopping online.
- Check the SKU. If you are buying shoes and can't tell if they are pink or gray, look at the manufacturer's color code (SKU). This is the only "objective" truth in the world of retail.
- Read the reviews. Other buyers will often comment if a shoe looks different in person than it does in the professional studio photos.
- Use a color picker. If you’re a designer or just curious, drop the image into a tool like Coolors or Canva’s color palette generator. It will show you the hex codes. In the viral photo, the hex codes are undeniably in the gray and teal range, which proves the camera captured those colors, even if the shoe wasn't actually that color in real life.
- Calibrate your monitor. If you do any creative work, use a calibration tool. You’d be surprised how much your hardware is lying to you about the "real" colors of the world.
The debate over shoes pink or gray will eventually fade, replaced by the next viral illusion. But the lesson stays: your brain is doing a lot of guesswork behind the scenes. It’s better to acknowledge that we all see the world through a slightly different lens, literally and figuratively.
The next time someone sees something differently than you, remember the sneaker. You might both be looking at the same thing and seeing two completely different realities.
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Verify the lighting before you trust the color. Search for the official product listing to confirm the manufacturer’s intended palette. Adjust your screen’s white balance if you find yourself consistently misidentifying colors in photos. Understanding that color is a combination of physics, biology, and environment helps you make better purchasing decisions and prevents unnecessary arguments over a pair of Vans.