The lifetime of the organic devices remains a major challenge that must be overcome before the wide application of white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) technology. In this work, we present a new strategy to achieve WOLEDs with an extremely long lifetime by wisely control of the recombination zone. A blue emitting layer of 6,6'-(1,2-ethenediyl)bis(N-2-naphthalenyl-N-phenyl-2-naphthalenamine doped 9-(1-naphthyl)-10-(2-naphthyl)-anthracene was deposited on top of the mixed host blue emitting layer to prevent hole penetration into the electron transporting layer and to attain better confinement of carrier recombination. In this way, we obtained a WOLED with a record high lifetime of over 150 000 hours at an initial brightness of 1000 cd m(-2), 40 times longer than the conventional bilayer WOLED. The electroluminescent spectra of the long-lived WOLED showed almost no color-shifting after accelerated aging. It is anticipated that these results might be a starting point for further research towards ultrastable OLED displays and lightings.