The colors White and Black are widely used to depict opposites. Visually, white and black offer the highest possible contrast. In western culture, white and black traditionally symbolize the dichotomy of good and evil, metaphorically related to light and darkness and day and night. The dichotomy of light and darkness appears already in the Pythagorean Table of Opposites.

The topos of "light and darkness" is also reflected in numerous titles in popular culture, such as Heart of Darkness" (1899), Light in My Darkness (1927), Darkness and the Light (1942), Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), From Darkness to Light (1973), Darkness and Light (1989), The Lord of the Light and of the Darkness (1993), The Darkness and the Light (1997), Between the Darkness and the Light (1997), Out of the Darkness, Into the Light (1998).