Mourning colours around the world

White

In Hindu families mourners usually wear plain white, and by long custom a widow wore white without jewellery or the red marks of marriage, a rule that many families have relaxed or dropped. Sikhs and Jains also wear white at funerals. In China, mourners traditionally wore undyed white or pale hemp cloth, and white envelopes are given at funerals where red ones are given at weddings. Korean mourning dress was pale hemp. White in these settings stands for plainness and for the absence of dye, not for the meanings it has at a Western wedding.

Black

Black has been tied to mourning in Europe since Roman times. It became strict etiquette in the nineteenth century, when Queen Victoria wore black for the forty years after her husband's death in 1861 and British widows were expected to follow stages of full and half mourning. European influence carried black widely. Japan, where white was once usual, adopted formal black funeral dress in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In many South African communities a widow wears black, or the colour set by her church, for up to a year before a cleansing ceremony.

Other colours

Among Akan people in Ghana, close relatives often wear red or red and black, other mourners wear black, and white is worn to celebrate the life of someone who died very old. In Thailand, black is standard and purple has been associated with widows. Purple also marks grief and penance in Catholic practice, for instance during Lent in Brazil and elsewhere. In some Aboriginal Australian communities, mourners cover the body with white clay. Within any country, practice varies by region, faith and family, and many now choose whatever the dead person liked.

Colours on this page

Sources and further reading

• Mourning on Wikipedia
• The Conversation: Death and dying, how different cultures deal with grief and mourning
• Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford: English funeral and mourning clothing