White is the most vanilla of colors. But, like vanilla ice cream, it has its variations.

White is a tool to set off and show colors to their best advantage. Designers speak of the importance of “white space”, the unused blank space that surrounds and helps give value to your featured design elements.

A Picasso on a blank wall is more noticed than a Picasso on a wall with 20 other paintings.

But let’s speak of variations. Here are just a few names for shades of “off-white”, those pale tones that are distinguishable often only in contrast to one another or to plain white. Yet these shades add flavor and emotion to the overall design. And this is without even getting into all the slightly darker shades, such as variations of beige or light gray!
Cream
Oyster
Pearl
Ivory
Alabaster
Skimmed-Milk
Bone
Eggshell
(Fascinating how most of these are biological in origin.)
White is mostly something we don’t see. How about for a change looking at it? There’s a depth and richness to be found there.