Coffee is a

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model ...

ish

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

that is a representation of the color of a roasted

coffee bean A coffee bean is a seed of the '' Coffea'' plant and the source for coffee. It is the pip inside the red or purple fruit often referred to as a coffee cherry. Just like ordinary cherries, the coffee fruit is also a so-called stone fruit. Even th ...

. Different types of coffee beans have different colors when roasted—the color coffee represents an average. The first recorded use of ''coffee'' as a color name in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

was in 1695.Maerz and Paul ''A Dictionary of Color'' New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 193; Color Sample of Coffee: p. 53—Plate 15 Color Sample A11 The

normalized color coordinates Normalization or normalisation refers to a process that makes something more normal or regular. Most commonly it refers to: * Normalization (sociology) or social normalization, the process through which ideas and behaviors that may fall outside o ...

for coffee are identical to Tuscan brown, which was first recorded as a color name in English in 1913. Roasted coffee beans

Variations of coffee

Café au Lait

The color displayed at right is café au lait, also known as coffee and milk or latte. This is a representation of the color of coffee mixed with milk, which when prepared commercially by a

barista A barista (; ; from the Italian/Spanish for "bartender") is a person, usually a coffeehouse employee, who prepares and serves espresso-based coffee drinks. Etymology and inflection The word ''barista'' comes from Italian where it means a male ...

in a coffee shop is known as a

latte Caffè latte (), often shortened to just latte () in English, is a coffee beverage of Italian origin made with espresso and steamed milk. Variants include the chocolate-flavored mocha or replacing the coffee with another beverage base such as m ...

. The first recorded use of ''cafe au lait'' as a color name in English was in 1839. The

for café au lait are identical to Tuscan tan and French beige, which were first recorded as color names in English in 1926 and 1927, respectively.

Café Noir

The color displayed at right is café noir, also known as black coffee. It is a representation of the color of brewed black coffee. The first recorded use of ''cafe noir'' as a color name in

was in 1928.Maerz and Paul ''A Dictionary of Color'' New York:1930 McGraw-Hill p. 191; Color Sample of Cafe Noir: p. 39—Plate 8 Color Sample H12

Coffee in human culture

Ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

African people The population of Africa has grown rapidly over the past century and consequently shows a large youth bulge, further reinforced by a low life expectancy of below 50 years in some African countries. Total population as of 2020 is estimated at ...

are sometimes described as being ''coffee'' colored. * People who are

mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese ...

sometimes describe themselves or are described as being colored ''café au lait''.

References

External links