if black is the absence of color and white is all the color how do they make black and white paint?

Question

if black is the absence of color and white is all the color how do they make black and white paint?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

White paint has to reflect pretty much all the colored light that hits it; they normally make that with titanium oxide.
When you look at white material under full-spectrum light, your eye gets hit by all the colors and registers that as white.

Black paint has to be highly light-absorbent, so that no matter what light lands on it, almost none bounces off. When you look at black material under any kind of light, your eye receives basically-no-color-at-all and registers that as black.

You can make black paint by combining various other colors, because for example red paint = “reflects red, absorbs other colors”. If you mix red, green and blue paints, the mixture should end up absorbing pretty much everything. If you don’t want to mix black, you can make it using carbon powder, or powdered magnetite (Fe3O4).