Assessment of color white

Whiteness shown by substrates is in general composed of three different elements (see chapter Theory) interrelated to each other. The main goal is to compensate the yellowness shown by the substrate by color mixing techniques.
In general can be said that samples are made appear whiter by making them less yellow! By the same token it can be stated that less yellow means automatically more blue! In fact this statement lies at the core of the process of achieving higher perceived whiteness, within certain levels of lightness blue samples appear to the eye as whiter than those less saturated or yellow.
Furthermore samples sharing the dominant wavelength of 470 nm are found to appear neutral white, as compared to samples with higher (appearing greenish) or lower (appearing greenish) values of dominant wavelength. The recognition of this fact is crucial for the assessment and quantification of whiteness, since the dominant wavelength 470 nm is assigned a central role as containing those samples perceived by the human eye as being neutral white. As a consequence of this observation all whites have also a certain shade or tint.
Every perceived whiteness is thus characterized by two numbers: whiteness or how much is the saturation into the blue, and tint, how far the shade deviates from a neutral white.
In this picture the question after the best white is irrelevant since every white can be quantified and characterized by numbers, easing the task of stating specifications. Considering now the personal taste for certain whiteness it can be said that this varies with cultural background of the observer as well with the final application of the white object.
As such people with a cultural background of the Far East prefer a reddish white, Europeans prefer a neutral white, while in Latin America shaded bluish whites are preferred. On the other hand neutral bluish whites are preferred for objects suggesting freshness (like bottles for mineral water) but a reddish white are favored for white underwear garments.

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