The brown and orange disks of color are objectively identical, in identical gray surrounds, in this image; their perceived color categories depend on what white they are compared to.

Brown, when used as a general term, is a color that is a dark yellow, orange, or red, of low luminance relative to lighter or white colored objects.^[1]

Some amber and yellow colors of lower saturation are called light browns.

Brown

Brown
— Commonly represents —
nature, earth, soil, dirt, chocolate
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#964B00
B	(r, g, b)	(150, 75, 0)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(30°, 100%, 59%)
Source		BF2S Color Guide
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

The color brown is displayed on the right.

Brown paint can be produced by adding black or their complementary colors to rose, red, orange, or yellow colored paint. As a color of low intensity it is a tertiary color in the original technical sense: a mix of the three subtractive primary colors is brown if the cyan content is low. Brown exists as a color perception only in the presence of a brighter color contrast: yellow, orange, red, or rose objects are still perceived as such if the general illumination level is low, despite reflecting the same amount of red or orange light as a brown object would in normal lighting conditions.

The first recorded use of brown as a color name in English was in AD 1000.^[2]

Variations of brown

Pale brown

Pale Brown
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#987654
B	(r, g, b)	(152, 118, 84)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(30°, 45%, 60%)
Source		BF2S Color Guide
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Displayed at right is the color pale brown.

Dark brown

Dark Brown
— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#654321
B	(r, g, b)	(101, 67, 33)
HSV	(h, s, v)	(30°, 67%, 40%)
Source		BF2S Color Guide
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Displayed at right is the color dark brown.

Brown in culture

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Animal Rights

• The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Edwardian England from 1903 until 1910.

Astronomy

• The planet Jupiter has orange, red, and brown coloration in its clouds.
• Astronomers have recently detected the existence of the long theorized formerly hypothetical but now known to be actual astronomical objects called brown dwarfs, which are intermediate in mass between a gas giant planet and a star.

Business

• Pullman Brown^[3] is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms. UPS has filed two trademarks on the color brown to prevent other shipping companies (and possibly other companies in general) from using the color if it creates "market confusion." In its advertising, UPS refers to itself as "Brown" ("What can Brown do for you?").

The brown color scheme of Ubuntu (Linux)

City Planning

• Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where redevelopment for infill housing is complicated by real or perceived environmental contaminations.^[4]

Computing

• Ubuntu is well known for its default brown color scheme. The exact shades have changed from release to release, with a general trend towards lighter colors and 'shiny' graphics.

Cooking

a baked cake

• Browning (partial cooking) is a process to remove excess fat from meat by heating, as under a broiler or in a frying pan, until it turns brown.

Ethnography

• Brown is sometimes used to refer to brown people in general or sometimes more specifically to the darker skinned Indo-Aryan and Dravidian of South Asia^[5] or to Latin Americans.
• The term brown or bronze may be used by mestizo Hispanics to describe themselves, and by extension these terms may sometimes be applied to all Hispanics, even those of purely European ancestry.
• Austronesians in the 19th Century and 20th Century were often referred to as the Malayan race or brown race. (A term for Austronesians often used today is Maritime Asian.)
• In her 1942 Glossary of Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston placed "high yaller" at the beginning of the entry for her African American colorscale, which ran:

Food

• Chocolate is often associated with the color brown.
• Brownies are a favorite dessert.
• Boston brown bread is a popular bread made with molasses that is often sold in cans.

Games

• In the billiard game of Snooker the 4-point snooker ball is brown.

Movies

• Four shades of brown^[6] is the title of a Swedish film from 2004

the brown earth during a drought

Music

• Little Brown Jug is a drinking song written in 1869 by Joseph Winner.
• Brown Sugar is one of the most popular songs by the Rolling Stones (Album: Sticky Fingers).
• The song "Brown Eyed Girl" is by the artist Van Morrison (Album: Blowin' Your Mind!).
• The song "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver" is by the artist Primus (Album: Tales from the Punchbowl).

Nature

brown is a common human hair color

• Many soils are brown.
• Many kinds of wood and the bark of many trees are brown.
• Feces are usually brown.
• A large number of mammals and predatory birds have a brown coloration. This sometimes changes seasonally, and sometimes remains the same year-round. This color is likely related to camouflage, since the backdrop of some environments, such as the forest floor, is often brown, and especially in the spring and summertime when animals like the Snowshoe Hare get brown fur.

Parapsychology

• It is said that people who have brown auras are often unethical businessmen who are in business purely for the sake of greed, or people who are just generally greedy and avaricious.^[7]

Politics

• In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the German Nazi paramilitary organization the Sturmabteilung (SA) wore brown uniforms and were known as the brownshirts. It was often said of members of the SA that they were like a beefsteak--"brown on the outside, and red on the inside"--because many of them were former Communists. The color brown was used to represent the Nazi vote on maps of electoral districts in Germany. If someone voted for the Nazis, they were said to be "voting brown". The national headquarters of the Nazi party, in Munich, was called the Brown House. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was called the Brown Revolution.^[8] At Adolf Hitler's Obersalzberg home, the Berghof, he slept in a "bed which was usually covered by a brown quilt embroidered with a huge swastika. The swastika also appeared on Hitler's brown satin pajamas, embroidered in black against a red background on the pocket. He had a matching brown silk robe."^[9]

Sexuality

• In the bandana code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a brown bandana means that one is into the fetish of coprophilia.^[10]

Sports

• Brown is sometimes used as a team color or name, as in the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League, which got its name from its founder and long-time coach, Paul Brown, but also uses brown as a team color. The St. Louis Browns are a former Major League Baseball team, now known as the Baltimore Orioles; they do not use brown as a team color. For about 25 years, the San Diego Padres had brown as a primary team color.

Television

• In Firefly, a browncoat refers to a person who fought against the Anglo-Sino Alliance

References

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Brown

• List of colors

External links

• All About Brown