Horticrafting white sockets

Hi there...
In the horticrafting bench there is a recipe for 15000 purple and 1 white lifeforce that turns a random socket white. BUT: If an armour already has 3 white sockets and I do this, does it definitively turn one of the not-yet-whites white, or can it happen that a white one turns white again so to speak and the entire thing is wasted?

The latter.

Thank you