The sun is most commonly described as what type of star?

According to the system of classification, the Sun is known as a "Yellow Dwarf Star".

This group of stars is relatively small, containing between 80% and 100% the mass of the Sun. So the Sun is at the higher end of this group. The official designation is as a "G.V" star. In the stellar classification system, a star that is rated "G.V" is a dwarf star that is white or yellow-white in color. These bright stars convert hydrogen into helium by nuclear fusion in their core. They are brighter than 90% of the stars in the cosmos, and have a surface temperature between 5,300 and 6,000 K. and fuse hydrogen into helium to generate their light. "G.V" Stars have a projected lifespan of around 10 billion years. After that, they expand to many times their original size and become a "Red Giant".

"G V" Stars can experience several different stages. Some are newly forming, others are in their middle ages, and others are nearing the end of their lives. Our Sun is right in the middle ages, in a time known as “the main sequence”. It has already lived for 4.3 billion years, and will likely last another 7 billion years or so. At that point, it will balloon into a red giant star, and eventually collapse down into a white dwarf.

Some other examples of the yellow dwarf star group include Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and 51 Pegasi.

The sun seems to be yellow because of the Earth’s atmosphere, due to an effect known as "Rayleigh scattering" but in reality, the sun is white.