I'll admit that the dress does look white/silver at certain points, but I believe that the dress was a VERY pale crystal blue.
It's difficult to tell because this movie has a lot of simulated lighting effects (using paint color), and blue hues are often used for darkness in it. When apparently fully lit, though, Cinderella's dress does appear to be a very pale blue. And of course in darkness it looks quite blue, but that doesn't really count. As another clue, some parts of her gown and ensemble are more white/silver, while the main parts are always at least slightly bluish; perhaps an even better clue along these lines is the comparison to the prince's white jacket.
So yeah, I think the intention was for it to be a VERY pale blue. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate an image of an original color model sheet for it.
What really seals the deal for me is that, before the dress transformation, the Fairy Godmother says, "Your size and the shade of your eyes..." Her eyes are blue.
That's the clue that I had always automatically taken, but then I realized that perhaps she wasn't trying to match the color but find something that went well with it. Personally, I still think that this implies that her gown is supposed to be blue, but it's just not absolute confirmation.
Also, I have a collection of vintage Disney merchandise and every Cinderella item depicts her dress as blue (mind you that these items are from the '50s....when Cinderella first was released) and even the original poster shows her dress as being blue.
I think that we can fairly safely assume (or at least make a strong case) that Cinderella's ballgown is supposed to be blue, based on a preponderance of the evidence. None of the individual pieces of evidence proves anything on its own, though, because Disney are not always consistent themselves, and have been known to revise what was originally intended. For one thing the merchandise has varied in the saturation of blue, and it's always more saturated than in the movie. And the costumes for the Cinderella face characters at Disney parks have varied somewhat in this respect, too, and likewise they usually have a more saturated blue, relatively speaking. Some of this may well be the result of basing the color on the dark scenes in the movie, in which everything is much bluer (even white items).
It doesn't even have to be the latter or another mistake, though, as sometimes different divisions/departments of Disney change things to suit their own purposes or preferences. For example, Elsa's hair and dress color in
Frozen are very clearly pale blonde and greenish blue, respectively, while at the parks her hair is white and her dress is often (but not always, oddly enough) far less greenish and even a very slightly purplish blue sometimes (at least the bodice, but sometimes the whole dress):
http://www.bucketlistpublications.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/IMG_5056.jpgUnder the same lighting, the little girl's store-bought costume is actually the more accurate of the two. It's supposed to be the color of ice (visible in large chunks), so the true reference from nature is known:
http://www.weblogtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/Glacial-Lagoon2-cont-18.jpg?24bff9So why did they make these changes? I don't know, but I consider them deliberate, as the movie is recent and they have access to all of the source material. By the way, the merchandise has always gotten these colors right, at least so far.
Now, don't get me started on the mystery of Cinderella's hair color. Many consider her a strawberry blonde or even a redhead, but I think she's actually supposed to be a dark or "dirty" blonde. Here is my analysis and rationale:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042332/board/thread/91479877?d=242995441#242995441
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