British artist Stuart Semple has developed White 2.0, the world’s brightest white paint.
After launching the world’s pinkest pink and blackest black, British artist Stuart Semple has unveiled its latest development in his quest to create the most pigmented versions of colours for painting: White 2.0 – what he claims to be the world’s whitest white paint available for artist.
White 2.0 is made from a specially developed acrylic base, high-quality pigments, resins, optical brighteners and mattifiers, which allow it to reflect 99.98 % of light and make it incredibly bright.
"It really is the brightest white paint I've ever seen, and I couldn’t believe it when the lab results came back to say it was 50% brighter than any other," Semple told Dezeen, an architecture and design magazine.
How White 2.0 was created
White 2.0 builds on a "beta version" of the white paint, which Semple created as a prototype with his team of scientists a few years ago, following varied research. During the coronavirus lockdown, Semple enlisted the help of 2,000 artists to trial three versions of the material while painting at home. The artists were asked to fill out a questionnaire about the paint after use, which allowed to understand what users were looking for while working with the paint.
"Then we set about making a hybrid of all the features we knew it needed, which took a further couple of years and was a huge process of testing and trial and error," said Semple.
"We drew inspiration from the ghost beetle, but we also looked at luminescence in plants and natural whites that reflect light across the whole visible spectrum," he added. "We looked at surfaces that diffused light, not just from nature but human-made materials like the barium paints that were used as early as the 15th century by the likes of artists like Caravaggio."
The final version of the paint has been made using instant recoat technology, which means that it doesn't require multiple layers to achieve the desired opaque effect, even when applied to more challenging surfaces. It can be applied with a brush, spray it onto a variety of materials including paper, wood, metal and glass.
Although engineers from Purdue University had already created a white paint that reflects 95.5% of sunlight for industrial purposes, Semple hopes that his paint – which costs £19.99 – will be used by anyone regardless of their artistic capabilities.