White

When people think “clean,” they think of white. White is considered to be the color of perfection, light, and purity. This is why crisp white sheets are used in detergent commercials and why a bride wears a white dress on her wedding day. We often overlook these associations because of the default use of white as a background color, but they persist nonetheless. To get an idea of how ingrained the meaning of white is in our culture, just read the poem Design by Robert Frost. In it, Frost symbolically contradicts those associations by using white to represent death and darkness. Using colors in unexpected ways can be a good way to make a bold statement.