I haven’t done the color list exercise in a while, mainly because I thought I had covered all the main colors already.

For the uninitiated, the idea of the color list is to come up with ways to evoke a color without mentioning the color itself since one of the challenges of writing effective descriptions is getting the color just right. So far we’ve done purple, white, gray, brown, orange, red, green, pink, blue, yellow, and black.

But now it occurred to me that I had forgotten one color for which I often look for in descriptions, namely that color that a bedding catalog might call anything from tan to natural to linen to flax. I personally call it beige but that’s probably a rather European term. So I pose the challenge to you to come up with different adjectives or nouns that conjure this color that lies between white and brown.

Here’s my list so far, please contribute:

beige
flax
linen
natural
oatmeal
tan