Shades of brown can be produced by combining red, yellow, and black[1] pigments, or by a combination of orange and black—illustrated in the color box. The RGB color model, that generates all colors on computer and television screens, makes brown by combining red and green light at different intensities. Brown color names are often imprecise, and some shades, such as beige, can refer to lighter rather than darker shades of yellow and red. Such colors are less saturated than colors perceived to be orange. Browns are usually described as light or dark, reddish, yellowish, or gray-brown. There are no standardized names for shades of brown; the same shade may have different names on different color lists, and sometimes one name (such as beige or puce) can refer to several very different colors. The X11 color list of web colors has seventeen different shades of brown, but the complete list of browns is much longer.
Brown colors are typically desaturated shades of reds, oranges, and yellows which are created on computer and television screens using the RGB color model and in printing with the CMYK color model. Browns can also be created by mixing two complementary colors from the RYB color model (combining all three primary colors). In theory, such combinations should produce black, but produce brown because most commercially available blue pigments tend to be comparatively weaker; the stronger red and yellow colors prevail, thus creating brown tones.
Displayed here are some common brown shades. Some of them are associated with (any of various types of) soil, rock, or vegetation and are thus also classifiable among the earth tones.
The web color called "brown" is displayed as shown.
The historical and traditional name for this color is red-brown.
The color shown above at the top right at the head of this article (color #964B00) is the color normally and traditionally regarded as brown—a medium dark orange. Its h (hue) code is 30, which signifies a shade of orange. The color to the immediate right (color #A52A2A) that was chosen as the web color "brown"—a medium dark red—is the color traditionally called red-brown. That this color is a shade of red and not orange can be easily ascertained by inspecting its h (hue) code, which is 0, signifying a shade of red.
The first recorded use of red-brown as a color name in English was in 1682.[2]
Displayed here is the web color rosy brown. At a hue of 359, it is classified as a red-brown.
The color name rosy brown first came into use in 1987, when this color was formulated as one of the X11 colors, which in the early 1990s became known as the X11 web colors.
Burnt umber is made by heating raw umber, which dehydrates the iron oxides and changes them partially to the more reddish hematite. It is used for both oil and water color paint. At a hue of 9, it is classified as a red-brown.
The first recorded use of burnt umber as a color name in English was in 1650.[4]
Wenge refers to the distinctive color of the dark-colored wood that is the product of Millettia laurentii, a legume tree from Africa. At a hue of 9, it is classified as a red-brown.
Chestnut
Chestnut
Chestnuts can be found on the ground around chestnut trees.
Displayed at right is the web color called maroon in HTML/CSS and it is a brownish crimson color that takes its name from the French word marron, or chestnut.[4] "Marron" is also one of the French translations for "brown".
Displayed at right is the color smokey topaz. At a hue of exactly 15, it is classified as a red-brown or orange-brown. It can also be called a vermilion-brown.
This color was formulated by Crayola in 1994 as one of the colors in the Gem Tones set.
Chocolate is created from the cocoa bean. A cacao tree with cocoa bean fruit pods (which are filled with cocoa beans inside of them) in various stages of ripening
Russet is a dark brown color with a reddish-orange tinge. At a hue of 26, it is classified as an orange-brown.
The first recorded use of russet as a color name in English was in 1562.[10]
The name of the color derives from russet, a coarse cloth made of wool and dyed with woad and madder to give it a subdued gray or reddish-brown shade. By the statute of 1363, poor English people were required to wear russet.[11]
Russet, a color of fall, is often associated with sorrow or grave seriousness. Anticipating a lifetime of regret, Shakespeare's character Biron says: "Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd / In russet yeas and honest kersey noes." (Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, Scene 1)
Buff is a pale yellow-brown color that got its name from the color of buffed leather.[12] At a hue of 28, it is classified as an orange-brown.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, buff as a descriptor of a color was first used in the London Gazette of 1686, describing a uniform to be "A Red Coat with a Buff-colour'd lining".[13]
The name kobicha comes from the Japanese for the color of a type of kelp tea, but the word was often used as a synonym for a form of flattery[16][17] in a curious parallel with the English usage brown nosing.
Sandy brown is a pale shade of brown. Sandy brown is one of the web colors. At a hue of 28, it is classified as an orange-brown.
As its name suggests, it is a shade of brown which is similar to the color of some sands.
The color name sandy brown first came into use in 1987, when this color was formulated as one of the X11 colors, which in the early 1990s became known as the X11 web colors.
The web color Peru has a hue of 30, and is classified as an orange-brown.
This color was originally called Peruvian brown with the first recorded use in 1924 of Peruvian brown as a color name in English.[18]
The color name was changed to peru in 1987, when this color was formulated as one of the X11 colors, which in the early 1990s became known as the X11 web colors.
Wood brown is a color that resembles wood. At a hue of 33, it is classified as an orange-brown.
The first recorded use of wood brown as a color name in English was in Robert Ridgway's 1886 book Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists.[22] Ridgway further refined the details of its color coordinates in his 1912 publication Color Standards and Color Nomenclature.[23]
The web colorkhaki has a hue of 37, and is classified as an orange-brown. This example matches the color designated as khaki in the 1930 book A Dictionary of Color, the standard for color nomenclature before the introduction of computers.
The first recorded use of khaki as a color name in English was in 1848.[31]
長崎盛輝 [Nagasaki, Seiki] (2001). 日本の傳統色 : その色名と色調 [Traditional colors of Japan: their color names and tones] (in Japanese). Kyoto: Seigensha. ISBN4-916094-53-0. OCLC51110507.
^Maerz & Paul, p. 190; Color Sample of Red-Brown: p. 33 Plate 5 Color Sample F11 (The color red-brown is listed on page 190 as a variation of the color Bole, under its original 17th-century name, “brown-red”)
^ The color displayed in the color box above matches the colour called sepia in the 1930 book by Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Colour New York:1930 McGraw-Hill; the color sepia is displayed on page 39, Plate 8, Colour Sample A10.
Color coordinates
.jpg)
