Titanium White

What color is titanium white?

The story of titanium white

For about two thousand years the only white worth painting with was a slow poison, and painters knew it.

Lead white is basic lead carbonate, and the recipe barely changed between Theophrastus, who described it around 300 BC, and the Dutch workshops of the 1600s. Cast lead into thin strips, hang them over pots with a little vinegar, stack the pots and bury the lot in horse manure and spent tanner's bark. After six to fourteen weeks the blue-gray metal has grown a white crust. That crust was the only white in European easel painting well into the 1800s; under X-ray it shows up as a skeleton of every highlight.

The trouble was never the painting. Lead white went on faces too: Venetian ceruse, the sixteenth-century cosmetic, was white lead in vinegar and water, worn thick enough to hide smallpox scars. It made the skin peel, so you wore more, and it thinned the hairline, which may be where the Elizabethan high forehead came from. Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry, died of it in 1760, still in her twenties. Lead dust brings cramps and paralysis; the trade called it painter's colic. And in watercolor, with nothing to seal it, lead white slowly turns black.

Zinc oxide was the obvious fix, and it took half a century to catch on. Chemists in Dijon tried it in 1780, the French Academy of Sciences approved it in 1782, and the painters shrugged: in oil it dried slowly and cost more, and the lead makers talked down the safety difference. Where it worked from the start was watercolor, which does not care about drying time. In 1834 the London colormen Winsor and Newton sold the first zinc white made for watercolor and called it Chinese white. Other makers borrowed the name, and it has meant zinc white ever since.

Titanium dioxide is the white that finally won. First mass-produced as a pigment in 1916, it had taken the market from lead white before the 1920s were out. Today it is the most used white pigment on earth, past nine million metric tons a year by 2014, in house paint, paper, sunscreen, toothpaste and, as E171, in candy. The European Union pulled it from food in 2022 over the nanoparticles; the United States did not follow. The Saturn V rocket was painted with it. So, probably, is the wall behind you.

Here is my take. In watercolor the paper is the white, and a highlight you leave alone is brighter than any white you can paint. A tube of white is for the moments the paper cannot help you: a lost highlight, snow over a dark hedge, a tint that needs body, a sketch on brown paper. Zinc white and Chinese white are cooler and half see-through, better for softening and worse for rescuing. I use mine about once a painting.

Pigment facts

These describe the pigment in general. Every brand's tube behaves a little differently, so test yours on scrap paper.

How to mix titanium white

You cannot mix a white, but white changes everything you mix it into. Any color plus titanium white becomes a pastel with body, the way gouache does. The pairing that matters is white and Payne's gray: two parts white to one part gray is the shadow side of a cloud, and it covers, so it goes over a sky that has already dried.

Keep the water low. Thinned like a wash, white goes milky and dries to a chalky film. Used thick, almost straight from the pan, it behaves.

Using titanium white in watercolor

Use it after the painting is finished, not during. The whites you plan for should be paper; the tube is for the ones you lost. A catchlight in an eye, the rim of a cup, a wire fence against a dark barn: one dab of thick titanium white and nobody will know.

Snow and spray are the other classic job. Load an old brush with white as thick as cream, hold it a hand above the paper, tap the handle, and snow falls over a dark hedge that no masking fluid can manage.

On toned paper it becomes a color in its own right: the paper is the middle tone, white is the light, and a sketch with a pencil, one brown and a little white suddenly looks like something a museum would frame.

One thing I learned the hard way: white does not stay put. Re-wet it and it lifts, and a color glazed over dried white goes pale and chalky, like paint over whitewash. Titanium white goes on last or it becomes a problem. Zinc white and Chinese white forgive this more because they are thinner.

Titanium white vs zinc white (and Chinese white)

Opacity is the whole difference. Titanium white is titanium dioxide, PW6: the most opaque white there is, a little warm and chalky. Zinc white is zinc oxide, PW4: cooler, cleaner and much weaker, so it tints instead of covering. Put a stroke of each over a dry dark wash: titanium sits on top like correction fluid, zinc looks like breath on a window.

Chinese white is zinc white. London colormen gave it the name in 1834 when they sold the first zinc white made for watercolor, and other makers have used it ever since. Buy it for softening: mist, distance, a milky glaze. Buy titanium for covering: lost highlights, snow, body color on dark paper.

Nobody should be asking about lead white: it blackens in watercolor and its sale is restricted in most countries. If titanium white is a fresh coat of house paint, zinc white is a net curtain, and Chinese white is the same curtain with a nicer label.

More color stories

Mel, founder of Tobio'sI make portable watercolor kits and I named the company after my cat. I write these pages for the beginner I used to be, one pigment at a time.