Previous studies have shown that in Japan, individuals wearing black masks are perceived more negatively than those wearing white masks, whereas in Western contexts, black masks are sometimes preferred. However, previous studies differed in stimulus presentation: some presented masks worn by models, while others presented masks alone, leaving it unclear whether impressions of black masks are culturally dependent. The current research presented only the masks and asked participants from Japan, the UK, the US, China, and South Korea to directly evaluate the impressions of the masks themselves. Two web-based experiments were conducted. In Study 1, participants from Japan, the UK, and the US evaluated white, gray, and black masks. A separate group evaluated socks in the same colors to test whether the effect was specific to masks. In Study 2, participants from Japan, China, and South Korea completed the same task. Impressions were measured with items such as willingness to wear and likability, together with a rating of the typicality of each mask color ("How different is this mask's color from the usual mask color?"). Results showed that in East Asian countries, black masks were consistently rated less favorably than white masks, whereas in the UK and the US no such negative impressions were observed. Mediation analyses demonstrated that this cultural difference was explained by recognition of canonical mask color: in East Asia, where white is strongly associated with masks, black masks were judged as non-standard and therefore evaluated more negatively. Importantly, the same pattern did not appear in evaluations of socks in the same colors, suggesting that the effect is specific to the object "mask." Overall, the findings can be interpreted in two ways: as a perceptual deviation from the canonical association of "mask equals white," or as a social deviation from the norm that "white masks are desirable."