Do Blind People Dream? Yes, and Some See in Their Dreams

By Carlos Acosta · October 28, 2026 · 11 min read

Yes, blind people dream, just as sighted people do. What differs is what the dreams are made of. People who were born blind, or who lost their sight in early childhood, generally don't see pictures in their dreams: their dreams are built from sounds, touch, smell and taste. People who lost their sight later, roughly after age 7, often keep seeing in their dreams, although those images tend to fade the longer they have been blind (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004; Meaidi et al., 2014).

That is the short answer. Below is what dream and sleep studies have found, and what Helen Keller wrote about her own dreams. Every source was checked on October 28, 2026. This article describes research about dreams; it isn't medical advice. For questions about your own sleep or eyes, talk to a doctor.

Key points

Blind people dream. The studies below collected hundreds of dreams from blind people. What changes is which senses fill them.
Born blind: no pictures. Sleep-lab studies and a home study of 372 dreams found no visual imagery in the dreams of people born blind or blinded in infancy.
The age of sight loss matters. Researchers draw the line at around 5 to 7 years old: before about 5, visual dreams are rare; after about 7, most people keep some.
Sight in dreams fades over time. In a Danish study, the longer people had been blind, the shorter, less clear and less colorful their visual dream images were.
Sound, touch, taste and smell take over. In one analysis, 37% of dream reports from people born blind mentioned sounds, against 12.3% for sighted dreamers.
The themes are the same. Emotions and topics didn't differ from sighted people's dreams, although people born blind reported more nightmares.
There is a minority view. A 2003 study argued that people born blind do have visual content in their dreams. Other researchers disputed how it was measured.

Dreams and sight loss at a glance

When sight was lost	Do pictures appear in dreams?
At birth (total blindness)	No; dreams are built from sound, touch, taste and smell
Before about age 5	Seldom
Between about ages 5 and 7	Some people keep visual imagery and some don't
After about age 7	Most keep at least some, though it often becomes less frequent and less clear

These four patterns come from a 1975 review of earlier studies by Kirtley, as summarized by Hurovitz and colleagues (Hurovitz et al., 1999). Sleep-lab studies point the same way (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004). They are general patterns, not rules: each person's dreams are their own.

Yes. Losing your sight doesn't stop you from dreaming, and researchers have been collecting dreams from blind people for decades.

In a study published in 1999 in the journal Dreaming, 15 blind adults aged 24 to 73 recorded their dreams on audio tape for two months, and the researchers analyzed 372 dreams (Hurovitz et al., 1999). In a 2014 Danish study in Sleep Medicine, 11 people born blind, 14 who lost their sight later and 25 sighted people answered a dream questionnaire every morning for four weeks (Meaidi et al., 2014).

The conclusion is similar: the 1999 authors wrote that the dreams of blind people "reveal no great surprises" compared with those of sighted dreamers. The difference is in the senses.

It depends mostly on when they lost their sight.

People born blind don't see in their dreams. Dream researchers Kerr and Domhoff reviewed the evidence in 2004. Three careful sleep-lab studies, from 1962, 1966 and 1982, plus the 1999 home study, all found that people born blind and people blinded in infancy have no visual imagery in their dreams. People blinded in adolescence or as young adults, on the other hand, often keep visual imagery, both awake and asleep (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004).

Six of the 15 people in the 1999 study had been blind from birth and could not perceive light, and none of them showed visual imagery in their dreams (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004). For the four participants whose dreams had plenty of sensations but no visual ones, 55% of sensory references were to taste, smell or touch and 45% to sound (Hurovitz et al., 1999). The Danish study agrees: people born blind didn't have dreams with visual content (ScienceNordic).

Why around age 5 to 7? Kerr and Domhoff cite the dream researcher Foulkes, who suggests that the mental imagery needed for dreaming develops between ages 4 and 7 (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004).

There are exceptions. A 24-year-old man, totally blind since age 4, dreamed of stepping off a bus to look at some mountains, and said he could "see them plainly". The authors concluded that some people who lose their sight before age 5 may still have visual scenes in their dreams (Hurovitz et al., 1999).

Watch out for figures of speech. Blind people often say things like "watching TV" without meaning they see anything (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004). The same happens in dream reports: one woman, blind from birth, dreamed that Thomas Jefferson "didn't care if we couldn't see", and the researchers coded her "seeing" as a metaphor (Hurovitz et al., 1999).

People who lost their sight after early childhood, and people who still have some sight, often do see in their dreams. The 1999 study counted what share of each person's sensory references were visual (Hurovitz et al., 1999):

89% for a woman with partial sight, who developed macular degeneration at 63.
83% for a woman who became totally blind at age 8.
53% for a man who became partially blind at age 7.
24% for a woman, blind from birth, who can perceive very bright light.
9% for a man totally blind since age 28; for him, 65% were to taste, smell or touch.

Time matters too. Among people who lost their sight later, the longer they had been blind, the shorter, less clear and less colorful their visual dream images were (Meaidi et al., 2014). The 1999 authors describe visual imagery being gradually replaced by the senses that matter more in daily life. For what blind people see while awake, see what do blind people see?.

Largely the same things as sighted people. In the Danish study, the emotions and themes of blind and sighted people's dreams did not differ (Meaidi et al., 2014). What stands out is the senses and a few topics.

Sound, touch, taste and smell. In sighted people's dreams, about half include sounds, but less than one percent include taste, smell or touch, according to large studies cited in the 1999 paper. Blind dreamers report far more: they felt the warmth of the sun or the soft fur of a dog, smelled coffee, and tasted an orange (Hurovitz et al., 1999). In the Danish study, people born blind reported more sound, touch, taste and smell than sighted people; people who lost their sight later reported more touch only.

A 2023 analysis in Brain Sciences compared 180 dream reports from 7 people born blind, from the DreamBank archive, with 981 reports from sighted people (Kang et al., 2023):

Sense mentioned in dream reports	Born blind	Sighted
Sound	37.0%	12.3%
Touch	29.8%	8.6%
Taste and smell	12.7%	1.3%
Colors	4.4%	20.2%

The authors call it a small study, with dreams collected in different eras, one as far back as the late 1940s.

Objects known by touch. In 1948 interviews, an 18-year-old student blind from birth explained that her picture of a table in a dream came from knowing how a table felt. She knew some candelabras were silver because they were "very smooth to touch" (Hurovitz et al., 1999).

Getting around. In the 1999 study, 60% of the blind men's travel dreams and 61% of the women's included a mishap for the dreamer, against 31% and 28% in the sighted norms. One man dreamed he was on his hands and knees, ear to the ground, listening for traffic at a crosswalk. The authors link these dreams to everyday concerns about getting from place to place (Hurovitz et al., 1999). For how blind people get around awake, see our guides to the white cane and the guide dog.

Guide dogs. One woman, blind from birth, dreamed about her guide dog in 14 of her 32 dreams, worried she would lose the dog because of its age (Hurovitz et al., 1999).

In the Danish study, people born blind reported more nightmares and more aggressive encounters in their dreams than the other two groups (Meaidi et al., 2014). As ScienceNordic reported, about 25% of their dreams were nightmares, against 7% for people who lost their sight later and 6% for sighted people (ScienceNordic). The authors suggest a link to more threatening experiences in daily life. It was a small study, with 11 people born blind.

The 1999 study found the opposite on aggression: it appeared in 15% of the blind men's dreams against 47% in the sighted norms, and in 19% of the women's against 44% (Hurovitz et al., 1999). With different methods and different people, the question isn't settled.

People born blind don't. Kerr and Domhoff note that the mental images of people born totally blind lack uniquely visual features such as "color and brightness" (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004). Color words still appear in 4.4% of their dream reports, against 20.2% for sighted dreamers, and the authors couldn't rule out that such words are figures of speech (Kang et al., 2023).

People who lost their sight later may. In the Danish study, the color in their visual dream images faded the longer they had been blind (Meaidi et al., 2014).

Is the question settled? The debate

Not completely. Most studies agree that people born blind don't see in their dreams, but a 2023 systematic review says visual imagery in the dreams of people born blind "has long been a matter of substantial controversy" (Ilic et al., 2023).

The main challenge came from a 2003 study. Ten people born blind and nine sighted people slept at home with sleep monitoring, were woken to report dreams, and drew their dream images in the morning. Both groups scored the same on visual activity and their drawings didn't differ, so the authors concluded that people born blind have visual content in their dreams (Bértolo et al., 2003).

Kerr and Domhoff disagreed (Kerr & Domhoff, 2004):

Drawing isn't seeing. Research by Kennedy shows blind people can make raised-line drawings through touch that resemble those of sighted people.
Visual words aren't visual images. The study didn't rule out visual words used as figures of speech.
The brain signal isn't only visual. The visual cortex isn't restricted to vision, so the signal may also reflect touch, sound or imagery in general.

The 2023 DreamBank analysis also noted some visual impressions in the reports of people born blind, but its authors couldn't rule out figures of speech or a sense of space that doesn't depend on sight (Kang et al., 2023). Part of the disagreement is about what "visual" means for someone who has never seen.

Much less than sighted people's. A 2019 study recorded a full night of sleep for 11 blind people (5 born blind, 6 who lost their sight later) and 11 sighted people. Both blind groups had fewer eye movements while awake, in sleep stages N1 and N2, and in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The people who lost their sight later reported more visual dream elements than those born blind, yet their eyes barely moved at night, so the authors say the findings don't support the idea that eye movements in REM sleep scan dream images (Christensen et al., 2019).

Helen Keller's dreams

Helen Keller became deaf and blind at 19 months, after an illness (AFB). Her 1908 book The World I Live In grew out of magazine essays, one titled "My Dreams" (Project Gutenberg):

Ordinary dreams. She wrote that her dreams "do not seem to differ very much" from other people's.
Senses. She smelled and tasted much as she did awake, but touch mattered less.
Freedom. In sleep she almost never groped her way, and even in a crowded street she needed no guide.
Light. Sometimes "a wonderful light" visited her in her sleep.
Before her education. She already dreamed in touch and smell: once she smelled bananas so vividly that in the morning she went to look for them.
Seeing without eyes. Awake or asleep, she wrote, she saw, "but not with my eyes".

For more on her life and how she read, see Helen Keller and braille and how deafblind people communicate.

Where Braillito fits

The dream studies show how much people who are blind rely on touch, sound, smell and taste, awake and asleep. Reading by touch means braille (how blind people read), and braille is learned. Braillito, our app, teaches the braille cells in lessons with exercises you play, with lives, levels and a daily streak: 59 lessons in 8 worlds in English. It also has a translator, a dictionary and a cell builder. It is meant for anyone learning the code, such as sighted parents and teachers of a braille reader (learning braille as a sighted person) or adults who are losing their sight (learning braille as an adult).

Braillito is a subscription with no free version; depending on the plan, it starts with a free trial or a discounted first period, if it's your first subscription (is Braillito free?). Get Braillito.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, about the same kinds of things as anyone else. In a Danish study, the emotions and themes of blind and sighted people's dreams did not differ; the senses did (Meaidi et al.).

It depends on when they lost their sight. People born blind or blinded in infancy don't. Most people who lost their sight after about age 7 keep some visual dreams, which tend to fade over time.

People born blind dream in sound, touch, taste and smell, not images. People who lost their sight later often still see images, fewer and less clear the longer they have been blind.

Largely the same things as sighted people. Getting around and guide dogs come up often: one woman dreamed about her guide dog in 14 of 32 dreams.

People born blind don't, although color words appear in a few of their dream reports. People who lost their sight later can, but the color tends to fade over the years.

In one small Danish study, people born blind did: about 25% of their dreams were nightmares, against 6% for sighted people. Another study found less aggression in blind people's dreams.

Much less than sighted people's, according to a 2019 sleep study, even in people who still reported visual dreams.

Did Helen Keller dream?

Yes. Deaf and blind from 19 months, she wrote in The World I Live In (1908) that her dreams didn't differ much from other people's, and that she sometimes dreamed of a wonderful light.

Do Blind People Dream? Yes, and Some See in Their Dreams

Key points

Dreams and sight loss at a glance