White is the clearest case of paint and light working in opposite directions. Mixing paints always reflects less light, so no paint mix gets lighter than its lightest ingredient. Mixing light always adds, so red, green and blue light together make white.
White has no hue, so the color wheel rules do not apply. This page shows contrast figures instead.
CSS white is every screen lamp at full. Paint whites reflect a little less.
In paint
Without our white tube, every mix in the table is visibly darker than white. That is the model working as expected.
Closest two-paint mixes
- += 90% Yellow + 10% Blue #E7D621 · ΔE 30.2 from white
- += 90% Yellow + 10% Orange #F9D61C · ΔE 30.2 from white
- += 90% Yellow + 10% Violet #F5D420 · ΔE 30.2 from white
- += 90% Yellow + 10% Magenta #FACC24 · ΔE 30.2 from white
- += 90% Yellow + 10% Black #F1D51F · ΔE 30.2 from white
Equal parts
- += Yellow + Cyan #40BF46 · ΔE 35.0 from white
- += Red + Green #5E3F3B · ΔE 59.3 from white
ΔE is the CIEDE2000 color difference between the mix and white. Zero means the same color; the smaller the number, the closer the mix.
In light
A screen shows white with all three lamps at full. Any two opposite lights, such as blue with yellow, also add up to white.
The three lamps at these levels give #FFFFFF. Levels are the amount of light each lamp gives out, which is not the same scale as the 0–255 numbers in a color code; the method page shows the conversion.
Contrast
The contrast table shows how readable each color is against white, using the formula from the web accessibility guidelines.
| Paint | Contrast with white |
|---|---|
| Red | 5.35 : 1 |
| Yellow | 1.42 : 1 |
| Blue | 9.24 : 1 |
| Orange | 2.46 : 1 |
| Green | 4.62 : 1 |
| Violet | 9.85 : 1 |
| Magenta | 5.67 : 1 |
| Cyan | 3.32 : 1 |
| White | 1.09 : 1 |
| Black | 17.40 : 1 |
White mixed with each paint
Start from white (#FFFFFF) and add one of our ten stand-in paints. Shares are by amount, in our paint model.
| Add | 75% white + 25% | 50% white + 50% | 25% white + 75% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | #FFB0C1 | #F76579 | #DE3240 |
| Yellow | #FCF797 | #FAE64D | #F9DA26 |
| Blue | #C2DDF6 | #77A9E5 | #3464C1 |
| Orange | #FDE3A3 | #FABA54 | #F49629 |
| Green | #BEE9C8 | #75C585 | #3E9850 |
| Violet | #E8D3F2 | #C195DA | #844EAB |
| Magenta | #FFB0E9 | #F164C4 | #D32C91 |
| Cyan | #98EBF6 | #4BC9E5 | #16A5D0 |
| White | #FCFCFA | #F8F8F5 | #F6F6F1 |
| Black | #DDDDDD | #A7A7A7 | #595959 |
Named whites in CSS
| CSS name | Swatch | Code | ΔE from this page's white |
|---|---|---|---|
| white | #FFFFFF | 0.0 | |
| ivory | #FFFFF0 | 6.9 | |
| whitesmoke | #F5F5F5 | 2.0 |
Paint results come from a pigment model and our ten stand-in paints, not from real tubes, which vary by brand and pigment. Try any pair in the color mixer, or read how each swatch is worked out.