The Royal Navy started WWI applying camouflage on an experimental basis, with a wide variety of schemes and colours being applied to various ships at various periods. It was only from 1917 that the schemes were formalised, under the guidance of the artist Norman Wilkinson. These are the so-called 'dazzle schemes'. They were mainly used on merchant ships, but were applied to a number of escorts, cruisers, the battlecruiser/carrier Furious (plus the later carier Argus) and the battleships Revenge and Ramillies.

Camouflage was applied, like any other coat of paint, by the ship's crew. The largest part of the ship that had to painted was its sides. These were painted by lowering men over the side on 'stages', wooden platforms attached to the deck by ropes. The height of these stages could be adjusted, allowing the full height of the ship to be painted. Typically in the RN, a 'fleet', or strip of the hull, would be painted at one time, before moving on to the next. Rafts were also used to paint the areas close to the waterline that were difficult to reach with the stages. The stages were also used to paint the less-accessible areas of the ships' upperworks. The bottom of the ship's hull was painted with antifouling paints (typically red lead) when the ship was drydocked for refits and repairs, by dock workers using long-handled brushes from beneath the ship. There was typically a line of black paint, the 'boot topping', separating the camouflage paint from the anti-fouling paint.

Dazzle was applied according to strict patterns. For the battleships, Furious and Argus, these were tailor-made for the invidual ship. For merchants and the smaller warships, they were on a more one-size-fits-all basis. The patterns covered all areas of the ship, including the upperworks and turrets. However, this could take time to apply. The two battleships were painted in dazzle in November 1917. Ramillies would be fully painted, but Revenge was only painted on the hull. She received the remainder of her scheme in January-February 1918. The schemes used a variety of colours. The stereotypical dazzle colours of black and white were fairly common, but many schemes included a rainbow of colours. Ramillies' scheme, for example, used dark blue, yellow, black, light blue, green and mauve. The schemes were not mirrored on the port and starboard. Instead, the two sides differed from each other.

The first RN camouflage schemes of the war were based on the ideas of Professor Graham Kerr, a professor of natural history at the University of Glasgow. At the start of the war, he had sent a letter to the RN describing the principle of ‘confusion of image’, whereby animals camouflaged themselves by using their colouration to break up their shape. To acheive this called for violently contrasting lines and patches. This was a different principle from dazzle - Kerr's ideas sought to camouflage the ship, rather than its course and heading as dazzle did. These schemes were not centrally organised, but were painted on an ad-hoc basis by individual ships. This resulted in a wide variety of paint schemes, some striking, some more subtle. Audacious, Orion and Conqueror received the most notable schemes, with dark grey hulls and black and white stripes and spots on the turrets and superstructure. These early experimental schemes were observed by experts sent out by the Admiralty, and their reports used to guide a new set of experimental schemes. Experiments would continue through the rest of the war. In early 1915, false bow waves were commonly used, especially for ships operating around the Dardanelles. During 1915, the battlecruisers received an interesting camouflage scheme, with the ships painted an overall light grey with a long dark grey rectangle along the hull, though this was removed in 1916. Other ships would receive further experimental schemes as late as 1918.

Wilkinson first suggested dazzle to the Admiralty in April 1917, and was allowed to paint the store ship Industry to demonstrate its effectiveness. In June, a camouflage school was set up at Burlington House in London, the home of the Royal Academy of Arts. This brought in naval officers, artists, and expert modellers, and used scale models to produce effective dazzle schemes. Initially, 50 transports were dazzle painted. Based on reports from observations of these ships, it was decided to repaint the whole merchant fleet, as well as the merchants mentioned above. The armed merchant cruiser Alsatian was the first warship to be so painted. Generally speaking, the RN's surface forces found dazzle camouflage to be highly effective. Submariners, though, were more scathing about it, claiming that it had little effect on their ability to attack in trials. Dazzle painting had little effect when the ship was silhouetted against the sky, as they usually were when observed from a periscope. In addition, they usually used the masts and funnels of the ship to determine its course or range. These were less affected by dazzle camouflage than the hull shape, and so it had little effect.

The Admiralty set up a committee to determine the effectiveness of dazzle painting. This consisted of the Director of Naval Equipment, the Director of Statistics, and representatives from the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Assistant Chief of Naval Staff. Reporting their findings on the 31st July 1918, they found little statistical evidence for the effectiveness of dazzle camouflage. Their statistical analyses found that German submarines were equally likely to hit dazzle-painted ships and unpainted ships. Dazzle-painted ships were less likely to sink after a hit, but this was likely because they were larger. Despite the lack of evidence for dazzle's effectiveness, they recommended that its use be continued, as it had a great effect on the morale of the crews of ships with it, and had no disadvantages beyond cost.