The least clean thing in this image is the dirt they're standing on.
Song of the Angels by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1881)
This trope associates white with cleanliness, virtue, and innocence. In color psychologySong of the Angels by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1881)
, white represents cleanliness, freshness, innocence, and purity.
Due to white being the lightest color on the color spectrum, any blemishes, imperfections, and stains are easily spotted, and it also represents how something is fresh and new, free of deterioration, decay, and dirt. White can also be used to symbolize a character's moral purity, as it represents their innocence, or a blank slate, unsullied by sin or moral wrongness. If they wear white as a part of a career choice, it means they are working in an industry that requires them to be clean at all times (whether in culinary jobs or a field of science) and are obsessed with keeping their possessions clean and organized, to an almost fanatical degree.
In the workplace, white is a sincere and honest display of cleanliness. In culinary jobs, it's to show that the food is free of contamination and the workplace is free of bacteria. In scientific occupations, it shows how seriously they take health and safety because white allows stains to be spotted easily and addressed. This can also be played for horror, if a room is too clean, and too organized, then it can arouse suspicion and paranoia. It can show how dedicated they are to maintaining cleanliness and show how they will do whatever it takes to prevent a pandemic or to stop an antagonist from escaping.
White is best worn with light gray because black and dark grays are still visible under white overshirts, and the outline of white undergarments is visible under white clothes. When done well, this can symbolize how a character isn't as pure and good as they say they are; they've had to make some morally gray decisions in the past or in secret that could undermine who they are. If white is paired with black, it's a visible representation of a character's dark side or true colors, exposing them as hypocritical, self-righteous, or unempathetic. Hand-sewn patches on white clothing can invoke or have parallels to Kintsugi note . The visible patches and stitches show a character's resilience and self-reliance, but they can visually represent how they've endured hardships. The stitches show the physical and mental scars of the journey; they've weathered many storms and lived through challenges that would have broken others.
As symbolism, characters wearing white are usually portrayed as a blank slate that the world's evils have not sullied or corrupted. Dirt and stains show moral injury and how their innocence is being slowly eroded by environmental influences, such as upbringing, society, or survival. When white suddenly becomes stained with red, it symbolizes tainted purity and a loss of innocence, including the protection it confers. The use of white clothing allows the creator to use dirt, stains, and other blemishes as a storyboard of progress in a hero's journey, showing how they are no longer afraid of going against social norms, or it shows how they are now willing to sully their hands to achieve their goals. It shows how a character has had to go against their moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.
A virtuous character wearing white can be portrayed as gullible, naive, and overly trusting. They can misunderstand anything other than the most obvious, which leads to a total obliviousness to the evils they are committing or incomprehension of the evils they are witnessing. Virtue Is Weakness can be fully in play when a character is in an unforgiving environment or put in a position where they will have to skirt their morality in a gray area to survive unrelenting danger. These characters often have an arc where they must learn self-preservation, that compassion, empathy, and honesty can be easily exploited, or that kindness can often be rewarded with treachery.
Regarding animals, this trope can overlap with White Wolves Are Special and White Stallion, as both involve the color white being used to signify importance. Can overlap with Good Wears White, Gold and White Are Divine, Light Is Good. Virgin in a White Dress is a subtrope. Inverted with Light Is Not Good, and Villain in a White Suit. It can be paired with Characteristic Clothing Colors, Children Are Innocent, Clothing Reflects Personality, Meaningful Appearance, The Rich Have White Stuff, Rousseau Was Right, and Symbolism when the color is used to show the character's ritualistic obsession with cleanliness. Compare Heavenly Blue.
It can be related to Ascetic Aesthetic, where white is used to invoke an ominous feeling through its stark simplicity, Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress, and White and Red and Eerie All Over, where white and red are combined to create a creepy color scheme since white is used to represent purity and sterility. See also Pure Is Not Good, when purity can also mean sterility.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- Mr. Clean is the brand name and mascot of the Procter & Gamble company. He's a bald man who wears white to show the effectiveness of a cleaning product.
- Cruelly subverted in one "got milk?" televised ad. A Jerkass on his cell phone fires an underling, cackles about it, then steps into traffic, where he's presumably killed (a Gory Discretion Shot). He suddenly finds himself in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, which is almost all whiteness. There, an apparent white toga angel bids him, "Welcome to Eternity." The only things in sight that aren't white are a goldfish in a glass fishbowl and some cookies on a white china plate. When the jerkass goes to a white refrigerator for milk, however, he discovers that every carton is empty. "Where am I?" he asks with growing alarm. Cut to the "got milk?" logo on fire. Fluffy Cloud Heaven? Nope, the other one.
Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: In her first appearance, Mimimi is dressed entirely in white, and the first thing she does when she meets Rentarou is buy him a white outfit. It's later shown that she values inner beauty just as much as she values outer beauty.
- In DEVILMAN crybaby, a modern remake of the manga Devilman, Ryo Asuka is a blue-eyed youth with light blond hair, and is associated with the colour white, since he is seen in white clothes during the anime. This is deliberate: his true incarnation is Satan, an angelic androgynous being with white feathery wings, evoking the pop culture image of angels, in contrast to the titular Devilman, a demonic antihero.
- In Digimon Frontier, the main antagonist is a Digimon named Lucemon: an angelic-looking, blue-eyed blonde boy who wears a white toga. Again, he evokes the imagery of purity associated with angels in popular culture (white robes, golden hair).
- KonoSuba: Invoked by Claire, the personal retainer to Crown Princess Iris. She always wears a spotless white suit (one generally worn by males) to demonstrate the purity of her loyalty to Iris. Most people who get to know her are aware that her loyalty might be a bit too strong. That said, she's a genuinely skilled and powerful warrior, with the fact that she can keep her suit spotless even in combat being a source of intimidation.
- In Psycho-Pass, a person's digital hue reflects their stress levels and darkens when stress and heightened "negative" emotions are consistently present. Violent urges, nervous reactions, and emotional outbursts in an individual can cloud a hue, and people will often make fun of those with darker hues simply by referring to them as their color. Lighter hues reflect higher social standings, and the people with these are often considered to be enviable, upstanding citizens who are much more likely to succeed.
- Inverted with Shogo Makishima, the overarching villain of the show, with white hair and light gold eyes and a wardrobe consisting of lighter colors. Though his hue is "pure white," it is revealed that he is criminally asymptomatic and thus his hue will not change even when he is engaging in violent crime.
Arts
- David: The titular king is represented as the embodiment of Christian virtue — unwavering in his faith in God and exhibiting fortitude (one of the seven cardinal virtues) and moral purity. He is sculpted on white marble.
- The Problem We All Live With: Ruby Bridges is the only character in the painting who is drawn wearing white, and it remains unstained and unblemished as the racist mob throws tomatoes at her.
- Since Norman Rockwell was an advocate of civil rights, the use of white is to symbolise how Ruby is just an innocent child going to school like everyone else. It also shows that what's supposed to be a good sign of societal progression is being tainted by the fact that the angry, white crowd is throwing tomatoes at her and she's having to be escorted by 4 US marshals.
- The use of white also serves as a contrast to the stained and vandalised brown wall behind her, which is stained by a tomato and vandalised by racist graffiti. It is a visual metaphor for how the so-called purity of white America is only being ruined by their bigotry and hysteria over an innocent child who's just going to school like any other kid in America.
Comic Books
- Invincible: A Pure Is Not Good case, as the Viltrumites are a powerful galactic empire obsessed with their belief in Social Darwinism, Might Makes Right, and their own purity. They tend to dress in either all-white or nearly all-white.
Fan Works
- Vow of Nudity: Spectra the changeling is the most kind-hearted character in the series, and her nudity curse means her white hair, skin, and eyes are pretty much the only color on her except for her purple necklace which is the source of said curse.
Films — Animation
- Foodfight! (2012): Mr. Clean is one of the characters in the movie, and a running joke in the movie is that he's always getting dirty.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica Concept Movie: To showcase how Homura sees her as the embodiment of all that's good and pure in the world and that she's still the Law of Cycles despite not remembering it, Madoka's main outfit is that of a white-clad ballerina dress.
Films — Live-Action
- Bruce Almighty: God is always shown wearing white, and it's to reflect his divinity and how he's supposed to be morally pure.
- Creep Show: Upson Pratt's apartment is all white, stating that he always keeps it clean. Some cockroaches started to invade his apartment, he panicked and tried to hide from them, only to get killed by them.
- Nope: In 1998, Ricky "Jupe" Park wore white on the set of Gordy's Home and it became stained with blood during the Gordy's Home incident after Animal Control shot Gordy the Chimpanzee in front of Jupe. In his adulthood, he wears a red and white suit as he tries to tame Jean Jacket, an extraterrestrial predator, in an attempt to make a profit. Only to realize too late how dangerous Jean Jacket is as he, and everyone else at the Star Lasso Experience, is abducted and consumed by the creature. The red and white suit is a metaphor for how he failed to learn from his experience on Gordy's Home and how he has gotten more blood on his hands because he couldn't properly process his trauma.
- Ready or Not (2019): Invoked by Grace Le Domas's white wedding dress as it is used to represent Grace's determination to survive the night. The condition of the dress becomes more damaged and stained as the film continues, as Grace is forced to defend herself and escape from her in-laws.
- Star Wars: The Grand Admiral's uniform in The Empire is colored in stainless white and it reflects their work ethic, specifically how they lack it. Darth Vader hates imperial officers because he sees them as lazy cowards and believes they only got their positions in the empire through nepotism, not through hard work.
Literature
- The Black Magician Trilogy: Invoked by the Magician's Guild to rehabilitate its image after a Black Magic scandal. The High Lord traditionally wears a black robe, but due to its new association with black magic, they switch to white for "something fresh and clean".
- The inhabitants of the titular Island in Gar'Ingawi wear white at the beginning of the story, when they're Perfect Pacifist People. This is one of the first traditions the villains get rid of when trying to "teach them hate" (beginning with envy and fear) — and sure enough, from petty squabbles, to prostitution, to a bloody Civil War, evil floods the Island.
- The Great Gatsby: Subverted. Daisy Buchanan is frequently associated with the color white (such as wearing white dresses, owning a white car, and being linked with white flowers). This adds to her supposed image as a pure, innocent figure, which Jay Gatsby idolizes. However, it is eventually revealed that Daisy is a selfish, careless woman whose flaws are unnoticed by Gatsby.
- Bell Cranell in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is a pure hero, and his albinism exactly symbolizes that. The rest of the cast does get this memo, which is why instead of seen as a freak like many fictional albinos, he's often generally compared by the rest of the cast as a cute White Bunny.
- In the Heralds of Valdemar series, Companions (benevolent guardian spirits in horse form) are pure white with blue eyes. Their chosen Heralds wear all-white uniforms, both to reinforce the connotation of purity and to show that they are official agents of the ruling king or queen.
- In The Lord of the Rings, the main group trying to defeat Sauron is called "The White Council". Its leader is called Saruman the White, although once he decides to gain ownership of the ring instead of destroying it, he calls himself "Saruman of Many Colours".
- Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: After Elend becomes king, one of the first things his new Terriswoman advisor, Tindwyl, does is have white uniforms made for him to wear in public. To show a true change in leadership from the Lord Ruler (who wore black), to encourage hope, and because, with semi-dormant volcanoes called ashmounts filling the sky and land with ash constantly, keeping white clothes white is so difficult that no one else bothers, making Elend stand out even more.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Light Is Not Good example. Nurse Ratched and her orderlies are described as wearing clean white uniforms, with Ratched, in particular, being obsessed with keeping order in the Bedlam House that the novel takes place in.
- Pale: The Alabaster Role, which governs over mercy, is associated with white.
- The Raven Tower: The Raven's Lease rules with the direct blessing and protection of the nation's Patron God. The job comes with a Dirt Forcefield as a side perk, keeping their formal robes of office miraculously white.
- Tomorrow's Bleeding: In the penultimate scene, Murakoshi Naoyoshi gives Ishida Mitsunari, Konishi Yukinaga, and Ankokuji Ekei identical white silk kosode to wear for their executions. This reflects traditional Buddhist belief that the soul is purified after death, as they are freed from worldly impurities. Yukinaga, believing himself too tainted to be associated with such purity, refuses to wear the clothing out of shame.
It was pure white, without a hint of pattern or embroidery, and the fabric slid like water against his arm. He allowed the kosode to fall back onto the mat, not daring to put it on. He would only spoil the silk if he were to wear it.
- In Warrior Cats, most white cats - and indeed, cats whose names begin with the word "white", are heroic. Of particular note, Whitewing is a gentle, kind mother. When Lionblaze thinks through his Clanmates, wondering which might be traitors training with the Dark Forest, his thought when he gets to Whitewing is "Never. Just... never."
- Inverted in Diana Henstell’s “New Morning Dragon”, where the Devil always wears dazzling white.
Live-Action TV
- Alphas: In the pilot episode, Ernesto Morez is the main antagonist, and he is shown wearing a white and gray suit. Morez is classed as an influencer due to his ability to control the minds of his targets, and he uses his powers to convince his targets to kill others. Morez is shown to have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and is shown routinely washing his hands and replacing his suit with an identical one when it gets dirty.
- Fallout (2024): Lucy MacLean is shown wearing white as she wears a white wedding dress, a white tank top, and a white bandage/armband on her upper arm. This is to reflect how she and her fellow vault dwellers are naive and detached from the wasteland, as the series forces her to adapt to the dog-eat-dog society America has turned into.
- Good Omens (2019): Heaven and the angels are associated with the color white to reflect their sense of moral purity and moral superiority over the humans and demons.
- Mittens & Pants: Mittens is a white kitten who is sweet, gentle, and kind.
- Monk: The titular detective, who's a germaphobe and suffers from OCD, becomes so overwhelmed during a city-wide sanitation workers' strike, he hijacks a garbage truck and sets out on a one-man clean-up crusade, intending to ditch the truck in San Francisco Bay, grab another one, and repeat for as long as it takes. Cap. Stottlemeyer takes him to a clean room where circuit boards are manufactured. The two sit in a completely white room dressed in solid white hazmat suit-like outfits, including head coverings and gloves. The cleanness of the setting calms Monk down enough so that he can think straight again and solve the current case.
- Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: Played with regarding the White Ranger, Trent Mercer. He is the only one of the teen Dino Rangers who isn't introduced as someone willing to break the rulesnote and is characterized as a sweet, well-meaning kid when not controlled by the white dino gem (whose control he is eventually freed from).
- Red Dwarf: In Demons and Angels, the crew accidentally duplicate themselves and create pure good versions of themselves called "The High" and pure evil versions of themselves called "The Low". The High are monk-like individuals who wear white robes and devote their time to philosophy, poetry, and the arts. Although The High are morally pure, they are naive, too forgiving, and too innocent as they think being shot by The Low was an accident, and they apologise for getting blood on the knife that The Low used to stab them to death with.
Mythology & Religion
- Throughout The Bible, white as the colour of purity and redemption is a recurring motif.
- The redeemed and the elect get to wear radiantly spotless white robes in Heaven, for instance, and a metaphor for sin and the fallen condition of Mankind is that of an otherwise pure white garment sullied by the slightest drop of red.
- As a motif, The Holy Spirit is associated with white doves because the color is associated with purity and because of the Holy Spirit's description in The Bible as descending like a dove. Ironically, white doves are pretty rare in real life strictly because of their white plumage, making it harder for them to hide from predators.
- In European culture, white carries positive associations because it's the best environment to grow white flowers. In Greece, white is the color of mourning, as the Ancient Greeks hoped their dead would follow the light so they could find peace in the afterlife. In Finland, white is only worn by brides on their wedding day. In Asian cultures, white is associated with purity during weddings, but is mainly associated with death because white is used during funerals and is associated with ghosts and evil spirits.
- In Peru, people have to wear white during the holy week to represent repentance and forgiveness to honor Jesus Christ when he was crucified and eventually resurrected. In Colombia, white flowers are a sign of respect.
- In Arabic countries, white is worn by babies and young children to protect them from evil, and white amulets are worn as protection from evil spirits.
- In African cultures, white is also protected them from evil spirits and is seen as a symbol of wealth and prosperity.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer Fantasy:
- White robes are the standard uniform of the Cult of Shallya, an almost universally beloved order of pacifistic healer priests. There's a practical reason beyond connoting purity: working in hospitals, Shallyans need vestments that can be regularly bleached and boiled.
- Of the eight Winds of Magic, the White Wind is associated with physical and spiritual purity, including spells for healing, exorcism, and decontaminating food. White wizards tend to dress to the theme.
Video Games
- Bully: Inverted with the Bullies. The Bullies are identified by the white shirts they wear, which represent their neutrality. Their shirts are dirty and unclean, which reflects how they don't care for Bullworth's social totem pole, as they don't wear a vest as a faction color.
- Cloud: When the manual talks about cloud colors of black, grey, and white, white is "purified".
- Dead Island 2: Emma Jaunt, one of the survivors, is associated with the color white as shown by her white shirt, and her home has a white aesthetic. Emma is a pampered celebrity who hides in her mansion for the majority of the outbreak, which remains unsullied by the outbreak. When she arrives in the 3rd act of the game, her clothes are stained with blood to reflect how she's developed the determination to survive.
- Dead Rising:
- Invoked by Sean's white robes (or a white suit in Deluxe Remaster), Sean wears white to reflect his idea of moral purity and saintly ideals, but, in reality, he's just killing people for being heretics and non-believers.
- In the "Deluxe Remaster", Larry's redesign has him wearing a white uniform that shows minimal stains, aside from the blood on the apron. As a butcher obsessed with his status as "the best butcher in the world", Larry wants to keep his workspace as clean as possible. This is in stark contrast to the original, where his clothes were stained with sweat, and his workspace was covered in blood and other forms of stains.
- Dead Rising 2: Chef Antoine is one of the psychopaths in the game; he's a chef who's resorted to using human meat to build the ultimate dish to impress a reviewer. Antoine wears a white chef's uniform that has been stained with blood, and it's the first indication that Antoine has lost his mind and that whatever is in his dish is not to be eaten or even looked at.
- Fallout 4: Not only do the scientists of the Institute wear pristine white uniforms, but the facilities that they live and work in are also pristine white to reflect their isolation from the surface world.
- Fate/Grand Order: Upon reaching her third Ascension, Marie-Antoinette's outfit turns from red to white. It symbolizes the purity she has from being a sweet All-Loving Heroine who's adored by many.
- God of War Ragnarök: Heimdall is an Aesir god and an antagonist. Heimdall is famous in the pantheon for never being hit or struck due to his foresight abilities. He wears white and gold to reflect his divinity, and it also reflects his abilities. White makes stains easier to spot, and gold is reflective when clean, so it shows that his clothes have never been dirty or stained because of how untouchable he is.
- The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: Peaceful characters, such as the medic Nozomi and the conscientious objector Eito, have mostly white clothing and hair. By contrast, Hiruko wears a dress as black as her hair. However, the trope is subverted with Eito, who's faking morality.
- Mirror's Edge: In the game, the City of Glass is represented in white and chrome to reflect its status as a pristine symbol of Conglomerate greatness.
- OFF: A very dark example- the normal Zones take on a variety of colors, but the purified Zones have lost even their color and become pure white expanses in which all life has been eradicated.
- The Suffering: Torgue's white vest/tank top reflects his moral choices. If Torgue chooses good, his shirt remains clean and white; if he chooses evil, then his vest becomes grimy and stained.
- Vampire Survivors: Zigzagged with the White Hand, the true Reaper that appears if you kill the Red Death. It is Death in its purest form, untouchable by your weapons and unable to be outrun, and it wears an immaculate white robe. Unlike the other Reapers, it carries no weapon - its mere touch is enough.
Visual Novel
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: Played with. Kokichi dresses in a primarily white uniform and looks very much like a child, giving him an innocent appearance and representing the 'truth' half of his Duality Motif. However, this is offset by the fact that the outfit also resembles a straitjacket and Kokichi is an admitted liar who is far from innocent, even if he was Good All Along or a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst.
Web Videos
- Pop Cross Studios: In Christian Pearson's Multiverse Tales, Clayton, the leader of the Predator Coalition of Demon Hunters, has Mystical White Hair, and, as this video reveals, he used to be Terrified of Germs, just like his father, who obsessively cleaned every surface in their house constantly and rarely ever left home, to avoid interactions with germs. Clayton himself was afraid enough that he wouldn't even set foot in a park, for fear of getting his shoes muddy and having to clean them off. And because father and son's fear of germs was so powerful, it caught the attention of the demon Mysomucus, a seven foot germ who broke into their house, planning to eat them both. Clayton was able to overcome his fear once he realized that the mucus and grime Mysomucus was covering them with felt disgusting, but wasn't hurting him, but his father was paralyzed by fear and could not do the same, so the demon ate him alive, but spared his son. Afterwards, Clayton began to entirely overcome his fear through tons of dirt-connected exposure therapy, including doing mud runs, but in this video (which Christian released before revealing Clayton's backstory), he still shows traces of his former obsession with cleanliness by snapping at his former girlfriend, Cosmara Noroi, for touching him with her sticky, black, shifting demonic arm. (Yes, Clayton's a hero, but he's also a jerk)
Western Animation
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Rarity, a mare with a pure white coat, is a style-conscious fashion designer who loves being beautiful and hates to be dirty or messy.
- Steven Universe: Though predominantly associated with the color pink, Rose Quartz of the Crystal Gems is the (literally) Big Good who wears a white dress and lives by an idealistic moral code. Unfortunately, this innocence and purity of focus also become her Fatal Flaws, pushing her into Ambiguous Innocence territory once her Secretly Selfish and insensitive traits become apparent.
- White Diamond's powers literally bleach rebellious gems prior to making them empty dolls for her to control. Given that White is a Control Freak who views herself as literally perfect, she naturally sees this fate as being a great honor rather than the Fate Worse than Death it is to the viewer.
- Teen Titans: When Raven meditates and purges Trigon's influence, her robes and cloak become pure white.
- Transformers: When he was first mentioned in The Transformers (Marvel), Prima the First Prime was depicted as being a fairly ordinary-looking Transformer. However, as the franchise developed, more recent depictions of him (e.g., the comics by IDW Publishing, the backstories of Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Prime, and Transformers: Cyberverse) show him as being a shining warrior with a pure white body due to his title of "Warrior of Light". In universes where he's a genuinely divine being, he's described as being the closest in temperament and personality to the Transformer creator-god Primus, and deliberately tries to invoke Light Is Good to inspire others... even though he is also a firm believer that Good Is Not Soft.
Real Life
- Medical professionals and scientists wear their iconic white longcoats (although they also come in sky blue and light green) to spot stains. Through their jobs, they can become unknowingly contaminated by chemicals, biological samples, etc, so if they or someone else notices a stain on their garments, they can immediately take it off and get a clean one (and get in a decontamination shower if necessary).
- In the 19th century, Marie-Antoine Carême deliberately chose white as part of a chef's uniform to show stains and messes on the uniform, thereby showing the abilities of the chef and assuring the customers that their food is free of contamination.
- In a biological sense, a sign of good dental care is having white teeth. In other cases, white eyes are a sign of good health.
- The white aesthetic and previously white uniforms utilized in White Castle restaurants are meant to invoke an image of spotless cleanliness. This was important in the restaurant's early days when Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle had associated ground meat with filth.
- In Islam, many pilgrims returning from the Hajj often opt to wear white clothes when they return home. This is to show their purity of spirit, having carried out one of the Five Pillars of Islam.note
- Baek-kimchi is a variation of kimchi, Korean fermented and salted vegetables. It is also called "white kimchi," not only due to its white appearance (as Napa cabbage is white), but also because it does not have any additives conventional kimchi has — namely chili paste. It's seen as "clean", which means it's good for those with sensitive palates, i.e., children, the elderly, those with intestinal problems, ulcers, food allergies, or irritable bowel syndrome. Some also consider it to be a "palate cleanser".
