White armour has the opposite problem to black. If you base coat the model in pure white, you have used up the brightest value available before you have started, and there is nowhere left to highlight. Everything you do afterwards can only go darker, which means the model ends up looking grey and dirty rather than white.
The solution is counterintuitive but simple: do not paint white armour white. Paint it a light off-white or pale grey, and reserve true white for the final highlights only.
Build white from something else
Your base coat should sit a step or two below pure white. Three useful starting points:
- Light grey. The most neutral option. Gives you clear room to highlight upward and reads as clean white armour once highlighted. Easiest to control.
- Warm off-white. A very pale cream or ivory. Reads as slightly aged or ceramic, sits well with warm accents and earth-toned bases.
- Cool off-white. A very pale blue-grey or grey-violet. Reads as clinical and clean, and suits cool schemes and stark lighting.
Whichever you pick, the finished model still reads as white to the viewer, because white is understood relatively. A pale grey surface with true white highlights reads as white armour. A pure white surface with grey shadows reads as dirty white.
Why white paint looks chalky
White is among the most difficult paints to apply smoothly, for several compounding reasons.
White pigment often has poor covering power relative to its opacity, so it needs multiple coats. Each coat adds thickness, and thickness on a smooth panel shows as texture. People then apply the paint thicker to reduce the number of coats, which makes it worse. Repeated corrections compound the problem further, because every fix adds another layer to an area that already has too many.
Surface preparation matters more here than with any other colour. A grainy primer coat that would be invisible under a mid-tone is glaringly obvious under white. Our guide to priming properly covers getting that foundation smooth.
The practical answer is patience: thin coats, more of them, and a light primer underneath so you are not fighting to cover a dark base. Our guide to thinning paints covers the consistency that gets coverage without texture.
Warm white versus cool white
The decision affects every other colour on the model.
Warm white leans towards cream, bone or ivory. It looks softer and more organic, photographs well, and pairs naturally with browns, reds, golds and earth-toned bases. It can read as slightly aged, which may or may not be what you want.
Cool white leans towards pale blue or grey-violet. It looks cleaner and more manufactured, pairs with steel, blues and cold accents, and gives a sharper, more clinical impression.
What matters more than which you choose is consistency. Shadows, highlights and any adjacent neutral areas should all follow the same bias. Warm base with cool shadows is the fastest way to make white look muddy.
Shading white armour
Do not flood a white surface with an all-over wash. This is the single most common way white armour gets ruined. A wash spreads across the flat panels as well as the recesses, and the residue on the flats immediately makes the armour look grubby.
Instead, apply shade selectively into the recesses only. Load a fine brush with thinned shade colour and touch it into the panel line, letting capillary action draw it along the recess. Wick away any excess that spreads onto the flat with a clean dry brush.
Keep the shade colour light. A dark brown or black shade against white is enormous contrast and looks harsh. A soft grey-brown, a pale blue-grey or a heavily thinned version of your shadow colour produces a far more convincing result. Match the shade to your warm or cool bias.
Painting smooth white panels
Large flat white surfaces show every flaw, so technique matters.
- Start from a light primer so you are building up, not covering down.
- Thin the paint properly and accept that you will need three or four coats.
- Apply each coat in one direction, and let it dry fully before the next.
- Do not go back over a coat that has started to set. This is what creates streaks.
- Keep the brush loaded lightly and reload often; a drying brush drags and leaves marks.
If a panel has ended up textured, thin coats over the top will not fix it. Very light sanding on the flat with a fine sanding stick, followed by a thin repaint, genuinely will.
Highlighting white
Because your base is already light, highlights need to be narrow and used sparingly, or the whole panel becomes the highlight.
Take your base colour towards pure white in one or two steps, and confine the brightest value to the upper edges and the points that face the light most directly. Reserve genuinely pure white for a handful of spot highlights on corners and sharp edges.
The temptation with white is to highlight broadly because the contrast is subtle and it feels like nothing is happening. Resist it. Subtle is correct here; the contrast that reads at tabletop distance comes from the shadows in the recesses, not from the highlights. Our guide to edge highlighting covers keeping lines narrow.
Fixing dirty white
White picks up contamination from everything: a dirty brush, residue from a wash, pigment carried over from the previous colour, or simply handling the model with the oils on your fingers.
For light contamination, glaze your base off-white thinly back over the affected area until it evens out. Several very thin passes work better than one opaque coat, which will add thickness.
For a wash that has stained the flats, repaint the base colour over the panel, keeping coats thin, then re-establish the recess shading more carefully.
Prevention is cheaper. Use a clean water pot, rinse thoroughly before touching white, paint white areas before metallics rather than after, and handle the model by the base once white is on. Our guide to fixing painting mistakes covers related repairs.
White armour over different primer colours
| Primer | Coats needed | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| White | Fewest | Fastest route, but leaves no natural shadow and shows every gap as a bright spot |
| Light grey | Few | The sensible default. Good coverage, slight natural shading in recesses |
| Mid grey | Several | Workable, gives deeper natural recess shadow, more coats required |
| Black | Many | Slow and prone to patchiness. Generally avoid unless zenithal priming first |
Zenithal priming is a good fit for white armour. Prime dark, spray light grey or white from above, then apply thinned off-white over the top so the underlying gradient shows through. It does much of the shading work for you.
Weathering white armour
Optional, and worth considering because white shows weathering more readily than any other colour, which cuts both ways.
A little dirt at the feet, a few restrained chips along the most exposed edges, and a very light dust tone on horizontal surfaces gives a used look without much effort. The risk is that white amplifies everything, so half the weathering you would apply to a mid-tone colour is usually enough.
If the scheme is meant to look clean and ceremonial, skip weathering entirely and put the effort into smooth panels instead.
White versus bone
These are often confused and they are different materials.
White is a neutral or near-neutral high-value colour, shaded with greys and highlighted towards pure white. It reads as painted, manufactured, clean.
Bone is a warm, yellowish, lower-value colour, shaded with browns and highlighted towards a pale cream rather than white. It reads as organic and aged. Bone is considerably more forgiving to paint, because its lower base value leaves room to highlight and its warmth hides small inconsistencies.
If white armour is proving frustrating, bone is a genuinely good alternative that achieves a similar light-armour look with much less difficulty. Our guide to choosing an army colour scheme covers how a light dominant colour interacts with accents.
Frequently asked questions
How many coats of white will I need?
Over light grey primer, typically three or four thin coats. Over black, five or more and it may still look patchy. Start light.
Can I use a contrast or speed paint for white armour?
Those products work by pooling in recesses over a light base, which suits white reasonably well as a shading step. They will not give you a white base coat, since they are translucent by design. Use them over an off-white base for the shading stage.
Should I varnish white armour?
Worth considering, because white shows handling marks more than any other colour. Matt varnish in thin coats, applied in suitable conditions per the manufacturer's guidance.
Is white armour realistic for a first army?
It is one of the harder choices. If you are set on a light scheme, bone or a light grey is far more forgiving and achieves a similar effect. Our black armour guide covers the opposite extreme, which has its own difficulties.
Why does my white look blue or yellow?
White has no hue of its own, so it takes on whatever is around it. A blue-grey shade will tint the whole panel cool; a brown shade will tint it warm. Decide on your bias and keep shade, base and highlight consistent with it.
Independent guide published by Blubbercove Ltd/WarSplay. This article is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, authorised by or licensed by Games Workshop Limited. Warhammer 40,000 is a trade mark of Games Workshop Limited.