Sometime during 1850, Hunt and Millais independently developed an important variation of this technique: painting a fresh layer of white over the existing white ground and then painting on this while it was still wet. This is known as the 'Wet-white' technique, and it gave added brilliancy of effect, especially, said Hunt "for blossoms of flowers, for which it was singularly valuable, for sunlight on flesh and brilliantly lit drapery".

It is significant that this technique has similarities to the early Italian mural painting technique of frescopainting into wet plaster laid fresh for each days work.