How to Render - White Walls

How to make your Walls and other white objects appear Whiter

We often get requests for information on how to make walls, ceilings, or objects being rendered look "Whiter". White Walls and White Backgrounds are often a challenge, because illuminated items in the real world are almost never pure white. Whereas "pure white" is used often in computer images.

Some walls in the real world aren't as "White" as we think they are. For instance, if we stood in front of a white wall with a very bright flashlight, would the beam of the flashlight be even "whiter? If it appears whiter, then the wall wasn’t really white but was only perceived as white.

We have placed some tips for White Walls on the Render Plus Blog

Here is a typical rendering of a room with white walls, illuminated by artificial lights.

White walls which appear gray because they do not receive enough light.


It is actually fairly realistic, but often we feel that the walls are just not white enough.

Here is the same scene with the walls brightened using our Rendering Tips With a combination of self glow and the brightness slider we may be able to get close to the effect we are looking for.

Self Glow and Brightness


Get more rendering how to’s.

Check our Common Rendering Questions for more details about working with White Walls , and more helpful advice on how to render with SketchUp.

Also, we covered a number of Rendering Tips in our recent webinar. If you’re interested please view the Better Visualization Rendering webinar.

See all How to Render Tips