Color Inspiration: Wonderful Uses of Beige

Color Inspiration: Wonderful Uses of Beige

on Apr 15th 2010 with 45 comments

Beige and tan are most often used in websites simply as background colors. They’re commonly seen used in paper textures, grunge sites, or, occasionally, as a solid-colored background. The advantage is that, because they’re neutral, they can easily be combined with any number of other colors without clashing.

The websites shown below offer a pretty complete picture of how beige and tan are used in today’s website designs. There are twenty five sites included, but please feel free to share more within the comments.

The Theme Foundry

All For Design

James Charlick

True Design

Advuli

Eighty Two Design

Sinopse

InkByte

Infinitum

I am Docto

Tenth Time

Make Film Work

Pixelcraft

Mr. Simon Collison

Giantpea

Noora Katto

Grafikas

ONETWENTYSIX

Carol Rivello

Cooper Graphic Design

People 82

Christopher Barrett – Photographer

Mutt Ink

Sprocket House

E3Solutions

 
Enjoyed this Post?

Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!

By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Callum Chapman is a self-employed blogger, author, graphic designer and illustrator. He is the founder of Circlebox Blog, and is also the founder & co-owner of DesignGiveaways.com, a design blog dedicated to giving cool products away! Drop him a line at Twitter!  

Plus Premium
 
 
Note: Want to add some source code? Type <pre><code> before it and </code></pre> after it. Find out more
  • Shiva

    Now these are some VERY nice sites. I think I take Beige for granted, but its amazing what can be done with it.

  • http://magani.0fees.net tom

    nice sites

  • SC

    Add this one as well! http://borderleft.com/ Cheers!

  • http://www.androids.be Dennis P

    I really like People 82 !

  • http://www.mrcthms.com Marc Thomas

    Beige is the new black! In all seriousness, these sites really are beautiful.

    • http://www.moSphaere.de mo

      well… yeah… I knew it… ;-)

      http://www.mosphaere.de

      I just like those colour, especially as a paper-background in alignment with a deep red.

      Greetings,

      - mo -

  • http://www.90seven.com Dan

    Funny – I never consciously thought I was designing with beige. Now I feel all grown up.

  • http://www.idesignb.com Bryan

    Very Nice Collection!

    The Color Beige gives out a smooth and natural feel to an interface.

  • Raoul

    Grafikas is great, all others look like templates in my opinion :/ It mean that the level of the templates are growing Up but it mean too that the “design” of all the (english) websites tend to become equals… i beat a dead horse but financial and marketing directors are definitely our “masters”, it’s sad my friends…

  • http://i3mphotostock.com Symon

    Beige you say? Well i never……. Defo food for thought

  • http://www.designfollow.com designfollow

    great collection.

  • Bird

    20 more websites about web design… I’m sorry but you are insulating us, not inspiring us. Unless, this is a website solely for students. I think it can be more than that. Can’t beige be used for client websites? Or are you saying that beige really only works well when we’re making “web 2.0″ portfolio websites (where we get to choose which images and texts to work with.. and how hard is that?).

    PLEASE show us 20 websites for car companies, restaurants, hardware stores, global banking… something that will actually help us do our work….

    • Belinda

      That would be awesome :-)

  • http://www.jordanwalker.net Jordan Walker

    Those are nice beige themed sites, what is next periwinkle?

  • Jose Perales

    Great selections!!

  • http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mohammad-abed/6/269/968 Mohammad Abed

    Great Selection! Please take a look at a site I just finished thirdcoastfestival.org. I was the developer but the site was designed by Faust http://faustltd.com

  • http://petincanvas.com Pet in Canvas

    Great, thanks for sharing!

  • http://azzcatdesign.com Catherine Azzarello

    The thing about beige (and Lord, I hate the term ‘beige’) is that is allows for highlights. It’s like drawing on toned paper–you can develop shadows AND highlights with conte crayons. This allows the designer to go in two directions (lighter and darker) from base color.

    Also, *beige* is neutral w/o being cold as grey often is. It mixes well with other colors while retaining a slight warmth or ‘friendliness’. I think that’s a key point for websites–you want to convey warmth to users, since there’s no actual human interaction between user and keyboard/screen.

  • http://www.takingweb.com Takingweb

    great collection!…Love all!

  • http://airyland.com airyland

    It’s really awesome! Than you so much!

  • http://pariwar.info Nipun

    i like it ….. Christopher Barrett – Photographer …nice +10 from my side

  • http://www.krishnasolanki.co.uk/ Krishna

    I like the colour beige as it lets me be able to play around with other colours than can be “blended” into it…it gives that “light airy ” feeling, but can also be used in a dirty grunge way as well..

    my website and blog (http://www.krishnasolanki.co.uk) incorporates beige in the background colour, however has a hint of yellow as well…just to give it that brighter look…

    Nice to see how other designers use Beige!….

    good collection!

  • http://webylife.com Nikunj Tamboli

    Really Nice Website

  • http://k-win.fr kevin

    Wow i just love brown/beige, thanks for that, goes directly to the bookmarks.

  • http://spotdex.com Davidmoreen

    Some of them are nice, but I don’t really like any of them. I suppose beige is not my color.

  • http://sonergonul.com/ Soner Gönül

    Nice

    Thanks..

  • http://www.antoineguedes.com Antoine Guédès

    Awesome set.
    Good post Callum.

  • http://all-for-design.com Auré

    Hello here,
    thanks for the featuring :)

  • http://www.mjrportfolio.com Matt

    love it, thanks ;)

  • Sean

    What do you think of http://precinkt.com/ ? Another beautiful beige site.

  • http://twitter.com/shaimifch SHAIMIFCH

    It’s my fav color scheme :)

  • QSY
  • http://naro.co.tv naro

    wonderfull color, thank’s for sharing :)

  • http://www.geniuzdesigns.de g3niuz

    Eighty Two Design is really great…

    something new ;D

  • http://www.limelight-creative.co.uk Mark

    I’ve always been a bit wary about using beige in my design work, but some of these ideas have really given me food for thought! Great collection.

  • http://fwmedia.com Amanda

    Excellent – thanks!

  • pjotr

    I like the Cat’s Eye site. Not only because of the subject (learning from errors), but also the combination of 2 types of beige incombination with the kind of blue that was used.
    Found it here: http://www.thecatseye.nl

  • http://www.leomiranda.com Leo Miranda

    Good Job!

    Like my beige and green site, look here http://www.leomiranda.com.

  • http://www.nikosk.com Nick

    Beige is one of my favorite colors! That’s why I use it as a primary color for my site.

    Excellent presentation with some beautiful sites!

  • http://www.ourbridalsongs.com Simon

    Just noticed that images on this page only load when you scroll down the page far enough to have them appear on the screen = less download = faster page download. Any chance someone could point me to a tutorial on how to do this?

    Thanks

  • http://lewisnyman.co.uk Lewis Nyman

    I love lightly saturated hues!
    Biege feels so natural, a worthwhile list post!

  • http://www.jamescharlick.com James

    I just wanted to say thank you for the link, it’s nice to be featured!

    All the best with future articles.

    James.

  • http://www.bestglutenfreecooking.com Paul Simonds

    Awesome collection!

  • http://www.litmusonline.com/ Litmus Packaging Design

    I have seen many sites of these colors but don’t the name of these colors. Biege & Tan.
    I liked People 82 layout from all above mentioned layouts. Indeed, its eye catching.
    Thanks for citing it here. :)

  • http://www.fxchannel.com.cn/caipiao/boke.asp?cereuw35.showtopic.58123.html Martin Doyle

    How nice to receive information from you! I just answer inform you all the things are wonderful on you page. Thanks a good deal!