Titanium White: Love it, hate it, but could oil painters live without it? This powerhouse pigment is one of the most commonly used pigments in oil painting, and few painters would truly wish to part with it. Titanium White is associated with coolness and opacity, which is why we love it, but sometimes a person wants warmth and transparency, and that's where the frustration with titanium comes in. However, it's really good at being slightly bluish and super-opaque, so for what it does well, we love it.

When choosing a Titanium White in oil, one of the big questions is which binding oil to use. Different oils have different properties, so a brand may make more than one Titanium (one in linseed, one in safflower, etc). In oil painting white tends to get mixed into everything so the choice of Titanium White paint will affect most aspects of a painting.

When selecting a Titanium, watch out for Zinc! Many brands in the past mixed some Zinc White, PW4, into their Titanium to modulate its tinting strength (and other reasons), but recent research suggests that Zinc can have some problems in oil. While more research needs to be done, early embrittlement and even delamination have been linked to Zinc White. This is a deeper discussion than we go into here, but it is something to research and also to watch for when choosing a Titanium White.

Titanium White is so powerful that in oils, sometimes the opacity is cut with fillers, extenders, and zinc to make it behave in a bit more nuanced manner in mixes with other colors. Otherwise it may have a tendency to overpower.

In oils Titanium White makes a buttery paint. Titanium also has a reputation for high tinting strength as well as a "chalkiness" in tints that some consider overpowering as it lends a blue tone to mixtures. On the other hand, what would we use for the brightest highlights and speculars if not Titanium White?

The differences in binding oils will matter a fair amount to oil painters as will the effect of additives. Just take a look at pure Titanium White in Linseed oil in the pictures found here to appreciate the helpful effects of just a little bit of chalk and beeswax. Extensive interest in this over the years reveals that the question of how to formulate Titanium White in oil paint is a complicated matter, but here are some more results from Golden on the binding oil specifically: On the Yellowing of Oils.

The chalkiness associated with Titanium White can be amended by the addition of other pigments, and titanium is popular in many convenience blends which are tints of other colors. The high tinting strength can partially be cut with fillers, modifiers, or other pigments. Also a person can employ mixing strategies which counteract the usual effect of adding Titanium White. Some versions of Titanium White, such as the specialty Atelier version below by RGH are warmer.

A discussion of binding oils goes beyond the scope of this pigment article. However, a mention of poppyseed oil is appropriate here as it tends to yellow less. Poppyseed oil can also be associated with super-slow drying as well as cracking in paint films, so it must be used carefully. Titanium White is one of the pigments where the natural yellowing of oils is the most noticeable, so some painters opt to use sparing bits of poppyseed oil Titaniums, such as this one by Blockx.

We're not health and safety experts, so consult them for that part. Sanding or breathing PW6 can be dangerous-- our understanding is that it can be carcinogenic if the dust is breathed ("cancer hazard by inhalation"), so consult those health and safety experts and protect yourself with the proper gear. We were interested to find out that Titanium White can sometimes contain undisclosed contaminants-- PW4 and lead-- so consult Monona Rossol's work for more information.

Titanium White is widely used in so many other art applications like Gesso and grounds. When we need to cover a surface with an opaque white acrylic paint, we reach for Titanium White. In oils, perhaps the greatest drawback for titanium is the less-strong paint film that it forms. In a way we would describe this as softer, but in the way that something crumbles, so some people describe it as more brittle in comparison to pigments which form a stronger film, such as toxic lead white, PW1. However, lead white tends to yellow.

Titanium white comes in two kinds, rutile and anatase. The Rutile kind is more common, the Anatase kind is seldom found as it is somewhat deleterious to oil binders.

Check out our Full-Length Article on Titanium White for more.