Beige is a very pale brown which takes its name from the French word for the color of natural wool. It is variously described as a pale sandy fawn color, or a grayish tan, a light-grayish yellowish brown, or a pale to grayish yellow. It has come to be used for a range of light tints chosen for their neutral or pale warm appearance.

Beige was used as a color term in the modern sense in France beginning in about 1855-60; the writer Edmond de Goncourt used it in the novel La Fille Elisa in 1877.
The first recorded use of beige as a color name in English was in 1887.

Beginning in the 1920s, the meaning of the term beige expanded to the point where it is now also used not only for pale brown colors, but also for a wide range of pale yellow shades, some of more notable of which are shown below.

The term originates from beige cloth, a cotton fabric left undyed in its natural color.