Cross dissolve or wash in?

During our lesson today, we were experimented with using cross dissolves instead of a wash out followed by a wash in. The reason why we did this is because after consulting our teacher we figured out that perhaps in the few parts of the video where the screen goes completely white it may look strange. We thought that instead using washout's/in's we would use a cross dissolve so that there would always be an image on the screen. However after trying this, we all agreed that keeping the wash out's and was in's and having the screen go to white would create the sense that the main actress (Treeva) was thinking back to old memories. This would also keep the narrative strong as it would be more apparent to the audience that all of her memories of her and the main actor (Ivan) mean that they are no longer together.
In the end we stuck with wash in's and wash out's :)