Edo era
Kite Brown & Gold— 鳶と黄金
The warm brown of a kite's wing lit by afternoon gold.
10 named colors · 2 combinations
Brown Color Combinations.
Earthy browns, chestnuts, and raw umber from the Wada tradition. Brown tones dominate the historical textile palette — koge (burnt), kogecha (chestnut brown), and tsuchi (soil) were the workday colors of Edo merchants and craftsmen.
Named colors
10 brown colors in the archive.
Colours that go with Brown
From a standard colour wheel, Brown anchors these four classic schemes. Each swatch is computed from its exact hue, so every hex is a real, usable pairing.
Complementary
#7B4A2A #2A5B7B
the hue directly opposite — the highest-contrast pairing, good for a single bold accent.
Analogous
#7B4A2A #7B2A33 #7B722A
the two neighbours on the wheel — a calm, cohesive scheme that feels effortless.
Triadic
#7B4A2A #2A7B4A #4A2A7B
two hues an even third of the wheel away — balanced and lively without clashing.
Split-complementary
#7B4A2A #2A7B73 #2A337B
the two colours either side of the complement — the contrast of a complement, softened.
How to use Brown
Brown is a deep, muted tone (HSL 24°, 49%, 32%), which makes it a grounding background or strong accent. For text it passes WCAG AA for body text against a light background (7.4:1) — safe for paragraphs, buttons and labels. When you do set type on it, use light lettering. Pair it with its complement (#2A5B7B) for a focal accent, or with its analogous neighbours (#7B2A33 and #7B722A) for a quieter, harmonious feel.
Combinations
2 brown-dominant color combinations.
Every palette in the archive where brown is the dominant hue — from Sanzo Wada's 348 historical plates plus editorial deep-dives.
From the archive
Support the archive The full catalog, on your disk, as a thank-you.
- All 378 palettes (348 Wada + 30 editorial) in five formats
- Figma design tokens (W3C-spec JSON, drag into any file)
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- Full JSON — colors, names, eras, moods, dominant hues
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