What Does Red and White Make When the Colors are Mixed?

Time to add to our ever-growing color mixing chart! Today we will explore the question: “What does red and white make when the two colors are mixed together?”

As background, I am a teacher an artist named Lillie, and I love doing hands-on experiments about what pigments do when they dance together… as we saw with my recent investigation, “Red and yellow make what color?” Let’s start by examining my illustration of what today’s colors look like when swirled, but not fully combined.

Yum! I’m getting candy cane vibes (check out my candy cane drawing tutorial), and a desire to put on a Santa hat and get festive! That’s really a bold and delightful combination of colors. Now let’s see what happens when we let them fully mix together.

What Does Red and White Make?

The answer to “What color does white plus red make?” is… the color pink! That’s right: the easiest response to “What colors make pink?” is these two, right here. Pink is simply a lighter hue of red — the term “hue” meaning white is added.

Now here’s where things get tricky: You get a different shade of pink, depending on what type of red you use as your “ingredient” color. Let’s refer to my illustration below for what I mean. (Note that we’ll be using the RYB color model for this discussion.)

Different Shades of Pink

The middle of my drawing, above, shows the pink you get when you use a “pure red” — which is a different result from the more purplish-pink in the line above it. Why? Since red and blue make purple, a more blue-tinged red will produce a more purple-tinged pink.

If we add less white, the resulting pink becomes more vibrant and brighter. Since red and purple make magenta or fuchsia color (I challenge you to spell fuchsia correctly the first time!), adding just a dash of white to a blue-tinged red makes a slightly lighter, more reddish magenta or fuchsia.

What about using yellow or orange-tinged reds as our “ingredient” color to mix with white… like vermilion (what red and orange make)? Well, the result will be more of a light salmon pink — essentially, what pink and orange make.

As we discovered in our exploration of the question, “Is pink a warm color?” pink (and thus the combination of red and white) can be either warm or cool, depending on the “ingredient” colors used. Meanwhile, using a darker red means there’s black or brown added to the mix, so the resulting pink will look “dustier.”

What Does Red and White Make, in Sum?

I hope this discussion of “What does red and white make?” has been a useful follow-up to our investigation of, “Red and brown make what color?” What colors would you like me to mix together next? Do share!

Want more? Check out “What does red and green make?” The color red never ceases to amaze me in the different results it can produce by jumping in to the scene. For more on its meaning and significance, browse my piece on the red aura meaning.