Shades of white are colors that differ only slightly from pure white. Variations of white include what are commonly termed off-white colors, which may be considered part of a neutral color scheme.
In color theory, a shade is a pure color mixed with black (or having a lower lightness). Strictly speaking, a “shade of white” would be a neutral gray. This article is also about off-white colors that vary from pure white in hue, and in chroma (also called saturation, or intensity).
Colors often considered "shades of white" may include, among others, cream, eggshell, ivory, Navajo white, and vanilla. Even the lighting of a room, however, can cause a pure white to be perceived as off-white.
Off-white colors were pervasively paired with beiges in the 1930s, and especially popular again from roughly 1955 to 1975. Over-reliance on grays, beiges, and off-whites as a color scheme for interior decoration has been described as a simplistic choice made by amateur decorators with poor color vocabularies.
Read more about Shades Of White: White
Famous quotes containing the words shades of, shades and/or white:
“The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
““... So it’s plain to be discerned
That the shades of holy men
Who have failed, being weak of will,
Pass the Door of Birth again,
And are plagued by crowds, until
They’ve passion to escape.””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Once in a while, God sends a good white person my way, even to this day. I think it’s God’s way of keeping me from becoming too mean. And when he sends a nice one to me, then I have to eat crow. And honey, crow is a tough old bird to eat, let me tell you.”
—Annie Elizabeth Delany (b. 1891)