Shades of white

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" include, 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.

Whiteness measures the degree to which a surface is white in colorimetry.

Web colors

Below is a chart showing the computer web color shades of white. An achromatic white is a white color in which the red, green, and blue codes are exactly equal. The web colors white and white smoke are achromatic colors. A chromatic shade of white is a white color in which the red, green, and blue codes are not exactly equal, but are close to each other, which is what makes it a shade of white.

Off White

Off White is a 1979 album by American no wave band James White and the Blacks.

History

In late 1978, ZE Records co-founder Michael Zilkha approached James Chance and offered Chance $10,000 to record a disco album. Zilkha gave little direction and asked the band for its own take on the genre.Anya Phillips, Chance's manager and girlfriend, came up with the idea to rename James Chance and the Contortions to James White and the Blacks for the album. An alternate name, James White and His Blacks, was rejected by Zilkha. Phillips and the band put together outfits resembling 1960s soul singers.

Chance said that he was interested in the monotonous sound of disco music because it "doesn't have beginnings and ends". His persona is an homage to soul musician James Brown. Chance was also intrigued by the shock value of a punk group embracing disco. He received disco records for free and passed time listening to a record for several seconds before throwing it out a window. Chance wrote a piece for the first issue of East Village Eye, praising disco and denouncing "outdated, cornball 'new/no wave' drivel".