Brown is a color that is everywhere in nature, and it has countless variations and nuances out there. There are reddish browns, yellowish browns, ligher browns, darker browns, vibrant browns, and duller browns. However, they are almost never at full saturation in nature.
Brown is probably the most broad color group, followed by green, which is also commonplace in nature. There are so many different shades of browns that they typically get grouped into several common categories like olive, tan and beige, and these subgroups are often used when describing specific shades of brown.
General Rules
- None of the channels should be at 100%/255.
- Keep all three RGB channels greater than zero. Red should be the highest value, and green should be the second highest.
Examples coming soon!
Olive
Olive is a yellowish/greenish brown. Darker yellows generally fall under this category because of yellow's behavior of getting duller when you darken it.
Examples coming soon!
Tan
Tan is a lighter shade of brown, and it is used very frequently when describing colors. I am surprised this isn't considered its own color group in some circles like pink usually is. It's in a similar situation to turquoise/teal. They're both used frequently but aren't considered a basic color term of their own.
Examples coming soon!
Beige
I consider this the lightest brown category. It is paler than tan but darker than white. It's used quite frequently to describe objects as well, but not as often as tan is.