Brown is the composite color produced by a mixture of red, yellow and black. The color is seen widely in nature, in wood, soil, animal fur, human hair, human skin pigmentation (tans), peat, withered leaves, etc. It is also the color of toasted bread and roasted meat. Culturally, it is often associated with autumn, humility, and sometimes with fascism.

Walnuts have been used to make a brown dye since antiquity. The Roman writer Ovid, in the first century B.C. described how the Gauls used the juice of the hull or husk inside the shell of the walnut to make a brown dye for wool, or a reddish dye for their hair. The Chestnut tree has also been used since ancient times as a source brown dye. The bark of the tree, the leaves and the husk of the nuts have all been used to make dye.

Brown, although an independent color term, actually combines the orange hue (or close to orange) with low brightness. It can be described as an especially dark orange or, in painters' terminology, a deep shade of orange. The first recorded use of brown as a color name in English was in about 1000 AD in the Metres of Boethius.