I remember in elementary school that I was mixing paints and to make grey, and I found that a small quantity of black darkens white super easily whereas even a 50-50 split of black and white leaves an almost black color. Is black paint more potent? Is there some kind of complicated color theory?
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Consider that a thin enough layer of paint is basically see-through.
Since the material isn’t 100% opaque, you can imagine paint molecules receiving light from two directions: light from the environment, and light reflected by neighboring paint.
As a milky, matte substance, the paint reflects light more-or-less in random directions. So most of the light which returns back to the environment from this material has been reflected numerous times within the paint.
So the light you see has basically gone through a chain, which is only as strong as its weakest link. Whenever one of these paths includes a pigment, the light is affected/absorbed. The only way to reflect whiteness/brightness is if every molecule in the random path has been reflective instead of pigmented.
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