Design AtlasThe word travelled from Malay "genggang" (striped) through Dutch into Europe, first naming a striped cloth before settling into "checked fabric" by the 17th century. In France it also goes by the place name Vichy check.
The structure lives in the weave, not the colour count — weave equal-width coloured and white threads tightly in both directions, and three tones appear on their own: colour-over-white (mid tone), white-over-white (lightest), and colour-over-colour where the stripes cross (darkest). A flat, printed two-colour check lacks this; genuine gingham always carries that three-tone read.
In CSS it needs nothing more than two layers of semi-transparent colour stripes, one horizontal and one vertical. Over a white base, wherever the two translucent layers overlap their alpha simply stacks and reads as darker — the three-tone effect falls out of ordinary alpha compositing, no blend mode required.
When to use
Use for picnic/country moods, dress or shirt texture, brunch and bakery branding. Narrow spacing reads as flat grey from a distance — watch the scale.