Shades of White
Whites have very high lightness, above about 90% in HSL, with little chroma. Pure white is #FFFFFF, all three channels at maximum; every other white is an off-white carrying a faint tint. That tint can come from any hue, which is why the family includes warm creams and ivories as well as cool, bluish whites, and why hue values on off-whites can look surprising, like snow at 0° or ghostwhite at 240°. The RGB differences are tiny: snow is rgb(255, 250, 250), five units from white in two channels.
CSS white is #FFFFFF. Snow (#FFFAFA) has a trace of red, ivory (#FFFFF0) a trace of yellow, and ghostwhite (#F8F8FF) a trace of blue. Whitesmoke (#F5F5F5) is a neutral light gray, a frequent choice for page backgrounds and code blocks.
17 white CSS color names
Sorted from lightest to darkest by OKLCH lightness. Open any color for its codes, shades, harmonies and contrast.
Using white in design
White and off-white carry most interface backgrounds, cards and negative space. Warm off-whites such as ivory and linen give editorial and lifestyle sites a paper-like feel, while cool whites such as ghostwhite suit technical products. Layering a slightly darker off-white page behind white cards is a common way to separate surfaces without heavy borders.
Accessibility tip: neighboring whites have almost no contrast between them. Whitesmoke on white measures just 1.09:1, so a tinted fill alone will not show where a text field starts. WCAG requires 3:1 for the boundaries that identify controls, so give inputs a visible border.