Building off some of the techinques from last weeks webinar (which should be up soon), I've put together a sample scene for this white ceramic sink.
**Before starting your project, I would set the realtime gamma to something in the 1.8 to 2.2 range.
The key to getting the white to look nice is to adjust those gamma values in the environment tab and realtime tab.
Basically, increase the environment gamma to get details back from blown out areas, and increase the realtime gamma to get a nicer, more gradual falloff of light across the material. adjust environment brightness to lighten or darken the entire scene.
As for the material, I just used a white paint and set the color to 100 percent white, then I used the gamma controls to really fine tune the visual result of the material. I also increased the IOR to get a bit more reflection. I added a blurred noise bump to give some variation to the surface (all included with the bip download below).
If you're working with a white material that is amongst other darker materials, you may not be able to adjust the gamma settings as much without negatively affecting the darker materials. In this case, you will need to tune the white material back down from 100 percent white to bring its brightness down to work well with the other materials.
For this image, I could take the background down in brightness a bit and up the brightness on the environment a bit to make the sink a brighter white that stands out a bit more.
(http://www.keyshot.com/images/JeffM/CeramicSink.jpg)
http://www.keyshot.com/images/JeffM/CeramicSink.zip (http://www.keyshot.com/images/JeffM/CeramicSink.zip)
That's really nice, Jeff. Thanks for posting!