  When a white dwarf (WD) is weakly magnetized and its accretion disk is thin,
accreted material first reaches the WD's surface at its equator. This matter
slows its orbit as it comes into co-rotation with the WD, dissipating kinetic
energy into thermal energy and creating a hot band of freshly accreted material
around the equator. Radiating in the extreme ultraviolet and soft X-rays, this
material moves toward the pole as new material piles behind it, eventually
becoming part of the WD once it has a temperature and rotational velocity
comparable with the surface. We present a set of solutions which describe the
properties of this ``spreading layer'' in the steady state limit based on the
conservation equations derived by Inogamov & Sunyaev (1999) for accreting
neutron stars. Our analysis and subsequent solutions show that the case of WDs
is qualitatively different. We investigate example solutions of the spreading
layer for a WD of mass $M=0.6M_\odot$ and radius $R=9\times10^{8}{\rm cm}$.
These solutions show that the spreading layer typically extends to an angle of
$\theta_{\rm SL}\approx0.01-0.1$ (with respect to the equator), depending on
accretion rate and the magnitude of the viscosity. At low accretion rates,
$\dot{M}\lesssim10^{18}{\rm g s}^{-1}$, the amount of spreading is negligible
and most of the dissipated energy is radiated back into the accretion disk.
When the accretion rate is high, such as in dwarf novae, symbiotic binaries,
and supersoft sources, the material may spread to latitudes high enough to be
directly visible above the accretion disk.
