White is the combination of all the colors of the visible light spectrum. It is an achromatic color, since it has no hue. White is purity, cleanliness, and innocence. Like black, white goes well with almost any color.
The word white comes from the Common Germanic hwitaz though the Old English word hwīt. The word designates the perception of light containing equal amounts of all wavelengths in the visible spectrum.
The impression of white light can be created by mixing appropriate intensities of the primary colors of light — red, green and blue — a process called additive mixing, but the illumination provided by this technique has significant differences from that produced by incandescence.
In nature, white results when transparent fibers, particles, or droplets are in a transparent matrix of a substantially different refractive index. Examples include classic "white" substances such as sugar, foam, pure sand or snow, cotton, clouds, and milk. Crystal boundaries and imperfections can also make otherwise transparent materials white, as in the milky quartz or the microcrystalline structure of a seashell. This is also true for artificial paints and pigments, where white results when finely divided transparent material of a high refractive index is suspended in a contrasting binder. Typically paints contain calcium carbonate and/or synthetic rutile with no other pigments if a white color is desired.
To the human eye, white is a brilliant color that can cause headaches for some. …
