shades of brown

Not a hue of its own: brown is orange at low brightness, around 15° to 45°.

The shade ramp

Same hue and saturation, brightness falling from near-white to near-black. This is what most people mean by “shades of brown”.

#F59536

#DC8630

#C3772B

#AA6825

#915820

#78491A

#5F3A15

#462B0F

#2D1C0A

#140C04

Brightness ramp at hue 30°, saturation 78%.

The tint ramp

Same hue and brightness, saturation climbing from almost gray to full strength. Saturation is the channel players misjudge most often, because a washed-out brown and a vivid one carry the same name.

#EBE1D8

#EBD5C0

#EBC9A8

#EBBD90

#EBB178

#EBA560

#EB9948

#EB8D30

#EB8118

#EB7500

Saturation ramp at hue 30°, brightness 92%.

Across the range

Everything the eye files under brown, sampled from 15° to 45°. Two colors at opposite ends of this strip still share one word.

#E05628

#E06128

#E06B28

#E07528

#E07F28

#E08A28

#E09428

#E09E28

#E0A828

#E0B228

Hue sweep from 15° to 45°.

Named browns

Chocolate#7B3F00
Chestnut#954535
Taupe#483C32
Sienna#A0522D
Beige#F5F5DC

Why brown is hard to remember

Brown is the clearest proof that colour names mislead memory. It has no band on the wheel — it is dark, moderately saturated orange — so people asked to rebuild a brown reach for a hue that does not exist and end up nowhere near it.

Off Colors shows you a color for five seconds and asks you to rebuild it. It tells you which channel you missed and by how much.

Test your color memory

Other hue families

How the scoring works