White carries some of the most sharply contrasting cultural meanings of any colour — purity and celebration in many Western traditions, but mourning in several East and South Asian traditions.
No single HEX value defines this entire colour family — see individual colour profiles below for specific shades.
Lead white was the dominant white pigment in Western painting for over two thousand years, prized for its strong opacity despite being made from a metal now known to be a serious neurotoxin.
antiquity to 20th century
White wedding dress became a widespread Western tradition in the 19th century, often credited to the influence of Queen Victoria's own 1840 wedding, though white had been worn by some brides before that.
Western · 19th century
The exact origin of the tradition is debated; Victoria's wedding is the most commonly cited turning point, not necessarily the sole cause.
White is a traditional colour of mourning in China, and in Hindu mourning traditions in India, in contrast with white's association with purity or celebration in many Western contexts.
Chinese and Hindu
Titanium white, developed in the early 20th century, is now the dominant white pigment in modern paint, prized for its strong opacity and, unlike lead white, low toxicity.
20th century
A white pigment has to be opaque, bright and stable in whatever it is mixed with, and no single material has met all three requirements for everyone. Lead white, a basic lead carbonate, served for centuries but can darken to lead sulfide. Zinc oxide had been known as a mineral since antiquity yet was not used as a pigment until the 18th century; it is also known as Chinese white. Titanium dioxide was first produced between 1910 and 1920 and has greater hiding power than either. In paintings of the changeover the whites coexist: Van Gogh painted a sky in pure zinc white in 1889, and Modigliani combined lead and zinc whites in a single chemise in 1919. 1, 2, 3, 4
| Name | Kind | Period | What is known | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chalk | Pigment | medieval panel painting | Used for the preparatory ground of northern European panels, as on the oak support of the Wilton Diptych. | 5 |
| Lead white | Pigment | antiquity to the 20th century | Lead isotope ratios in the lead white of Dutch paintings shift in the 1640s, which lets a white be tied to a change in metal supply. | 1, 6 |
| Zinc white | Pigment | from the 18th century | Zinc oxide, also called snow white or Chinese white. | 2 |
| Titanium dioxide white | Pigment | from 1910–1920 | Taken up by a multitude of painters after its first production, and the dominant white since. | 3, 4 |
| When | Where | What happened | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old English period | England | Hwit meant bright and radiant as well as white, and was used of lustrous metal, especially silver; the sense 'morally pure' was already present. | 7 |
| 1406 | Lund | Philippa of England married Eric of Pomerania in a tunic and mantle with a long train of white satin — an early royal wedding with white in it, though perhaps not white throughout. | 8 |
| 1843–47 | Edo, Japan | Kuniyoshi's print of a wedding shows the bride being helped out of the shiromuku, the 'pure white' robe worn for the procession and the ceremony. | 9 |
| 1889 | — | Van Gogh painted the white sky of Wheat Field with Cypresses in pure zinc white. | 2 |
| 29 July 1899 | The Hague | The laws of war on land recognised a person carrying a white flag, and authorised to parley, as inviolable. | 10 |
Claim: Queen Victoria was the first bride to wear white.
Evidence: Overstated. V&A curators note that white and near-white gowns were ordinary fashionable dress in the early 1800s and were worn at weddings, and that a royal bride is documented in white satin in 1406. Their narrower conclusion is that Victoria was, to their knowledge, the first royal bride in British history to dress entirely in white, and that prints and newspapers then spread the image. 8