It can be drawn as an alternating link with five crossings, from the overlay of a circle and a figure-eight shaped loop.

A common way of describing this knot is formed by overlaying a figure-eight shaped loop with another circular loop surrounding the crossing of the figure-eight.

This drawing has five crossings, one of which is the self-crossing of the figure-eight curve, which does not count towards the linking number.

The hyperbolic volume of the complement of the Whitehead link is 4 times Catalan's constant, approximately 3.66.

The Whitehead link complement is one of two two-cusped hyperbolic manifolds with the minimum possible volume, the other being the complement of the pretzel link with parameters (−2, 3, 8).

In 1934, he used the link as part of his construction of the now-named Whitehead manifold, which refuted his previous purported proof of the conjecture.