20 Brown Websites for Design Inspiration

When it comes to websites, designers know it’s important to have a color scheme in mind. Designing a brown website may not be the first thing that comes to your mind — but don’t disregard it just yet!

According to color psychology, the color brown, when used in marketing, represents reliability, dependability, strength, and resilience. It can be appropriate for natural, earthy, and down-to-earth brands, but also feels very sophisticated.

If that sounds like a good fit for your brand, consider designing your website with a brown color scheme. While it’s one of the most popular colors in clothing and home decor, it’s one of the very least used colors in website design. So, your site is sure to be a memorable one.

Showcase of Brown Websites

Here’s some brown color inspiration for your next design project. We’ve rounded up 20 of our favorite tan and brown website designs. From rich, dark chocolate to light, airy wheat, there’s sure to be something here to suit your needs. As these examples show, it is very possible to create stunning brown websites.

LINCOR

The luxury watch brand, Lincor uses a light caramel color for the background of their home page. Does it surprise you that a luxury brand would choose brown for its website? Why not purple, the color of royalty? Or green, the color of money?

Sure, those could work, too. But brown symbolizes tradition. In its origin story, this watchmaker honors the masters that came before it. Brown also symbolizes sophistication, one of the hallmarks of a luxury brand. And, brown symbolizes dependability. When it comes to keeping time, you need your watch to be dependable.

Liza Kovalova

Liza is a designer and copywriter in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her entire site is designed in shades of brown — pale buttercream background with milk chocolate display text. (Can you tell I have a sweet tooth?) Even her photos, while they are in color, have a sort-of sepia tone to them. The brown color signifies reliability, steadfastness, and dependability. These are all qualities you would want in a person you’re hiring.

Twigs Paper

Twigs is an e-commerce site that sells eco-friendly cards and notebooks. They have a strong mission about giving back to the planet through sustainability — only using 100% post-consumer waste paper, non-toxic inks, and recyclable shipping materials.

With such values related to the environment, it’s a no-brainer that their website’s color scheme would include shades of brown and green, colors of the earth, signifying nature and eco-friendliness. The main background color is a very light, but warm and inviting sand color; paired with a deep olive green for the logo, links, and footer.

Themes Kingdom

Brown, when used in website design, can tell a tale of stability, dependability, and security — things you definitely want in a WordPress theme. Designers, if you’ve ever had to clean up the mess that a crappy WordPress theme left behind, you’re nodding your head in agreement right now.

So maybe that’s why ThemesKingdom chose a tan for their main background color. Or maybe they chose it because they knew their site would stand out among all the blues and greens that are so common in website design today.

UPS

Well, it wouldn’t be a roundup of brown websites without this one! UPS has, perhaps, the most famous brown logo of all time, the brown trucks, the brown uniforms. They even ask the question, “What can brown do for you?” It would honestly be really weird if their website were any other color. (Imagine pulling up UPS.com and having a pink or yellow website load in front of you! Ha!)

But, even if they weren’t so married to the color brown, it would be a good choice for them. Reliability, security, that good ol’ dependability again, security, strength — all qualities you want in a domestic and international shipping company.

Just Desserts

Remember up above when I mentioned I had a sweet tooth? Well, this site just gave me a mouthful of cavities. Their background is not just brown, it’s a rich, chocolatey fudge! This is one case where the use of brown on the website design is most likely more literal than symbolic.

Just Desserts is a commercial bakery that makes…you guessed it, just desserts. The website also uses quite a bit of the color red. Red websites can symbolize love and passion, kind of like how I feel about sweets.

New Public

A pale peachy-tan shade is the main background color for New_ Public’s quite colorful website. New_ Public is an alternative digital public space for designers and technologists to connect. In this case, a shade of brown is appropriate since it represents nurturing — their goal is to create flourishing public online spaces. It represents safety — they believe public spaces should be safe and welcoming to everyone. And, it represents resilience — they believe the current, privately owned digital spaces are a danger to society and must be collectively redesigned and cared for.

Brooks England

Bike saddle and bag manufacturer, Brooks England uses a delicious shade of caramel apple for the background of the splash page introducing their new Scape premium bike bag collection. (Sidebar: Why are so many brown colors named after food?)

Brooks’ origin story says they have been making bike seats by hand for over 100 years. They are a traditional, conservative, sophisticated company. Guess what color represents all three of those qualities? That’s right — brown. What’s more, biking puts you in nature, yet another reason the color brown is appropriate for the site’s design.

The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation

The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation aims to provide digital access to poetry and poetry materials to audiences worldwide. They also create films and preserve physical poetry books. Their home page is a deep, dark, rich chocolate brown, with a photo in similar brown tones and the headline, “Poetry is language caught alive.”

Brown is the color of earth, of soil. In this case, it was used to signify life and nature. And, since brown is the color of tradition, it works perfectly with the Foundation’s mission of preserving poetry for future generations.

Brown Websites - Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation

Ze Tan Design

Ze Tan is a graphic designer, illustrator, UI/UX designer, coder, and motion graphics artist. Her website background is Ash Gray (which sounds more like gray, but in this case, ash is the tree, not ashes from a fire — in other words, grayish-brown). Ash brown and black are the only other colors you see on the site until you hover over links. The hover effects are pretty cool here — big black and bright orange starbursts that tell you what you’ll find if you click the link!

So why brown for the content in question? I don’t get the impression that she is conservative and her work definitely isn’t traditional. However, as a designer, she is probably exceptionally reliable and dependable.

LATITID

Portuguese swimsuit designer, LATITID uses full-screen photography on their home page, but as you browse the site, you’ll find that, besides white, the main color they use is Cashmere, a light, creamy brown.

Additionally, all of their photographs have a brown vintage-style tint to them. This gives the company a cool, luxe, trendy feel, at the same time feeling warm, down-to-earth, and not stuffy.

Gubi Upholstery

When the Gubi Upholstery page first loads, you’re met with rich chocolate and a matching photo of chocolate brown chenille upholstery fabric. As the fabrics rotate, the background color changes to match. Since brown is one of the most popular colors in home decor, you’ll see mostly shades of brown as the fabrics rotate on the page.

This is another brown website example where the color choice was likely more literal. It had to do with the colors of the fabrics than what the color brown represents. That said, brown signifies luxury and sophistication, so it’s a great choice for a luxury brand like Gubi.

Viagem Filosofica ao Brasil por Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira

At the end of the 18th century, Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira took a 9-year-long scientific expedition through Brazil. Along his journey, he collected artifacts from the local people as well as minerals, plants, and animals.

Some of the specimens he collected on that trip are located at the Maynense Museum of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. This is the website for that collection. Rich with tradition, history, and colorful stories about his journey, it’s no surprise that the website would be designed in shades of brown, brandy, and buttercream.

Viagem Filosofica ao Brasil por Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira

Florets

Besides the color in its photographs and the white copy, Florets’ website is all deep, dark, brown. The company bakes sourdough bread the old-fashioned way, using a sourdough starter.

There are so many reasons the color brown is appropriate here. First, brown is the color of bread & toast. Second, brown represents the traditional methods Florets uses to bake their bread. Third, the color brown represents the wholesome goodness and nutrient-rich loaves the company produces. Fourth, I’m just kidding, you don’t need another reason, do you?

Martyna Kosowska

At first glance, this brown color scheme website looks like a fashion or skincare brand. But, upon further inspection, you realize Martyna Kosowska is a UX/UI designer and this is her personal portfolio website.

The background is brownish-gray. Her portrait is similarly toned with brunette hair and a champagne shirt. The color scheme and layout both do a really good job of making the site look professional, luxe, sophisticated. I get the impression this is a woman who knows her stuff.

Maggie Rose

Canadian beauty products company Maggie Rose has a commitment to sustainability and caring for the planet. That philosophy is reflected in the design of their website. A brown color scheme paired with warm photography that includes a model with auburn hair and greenery completes the look. The website’s home page has a light, creamy cashmere background color. As you scroll through the site, you’ll find shades like cotton, gold, and bronze — all giving the brand a luxury feel but maintaining the natural, earthy vibe.

696 NYC

Brown, beige, buttercream, and bamboo can all be found on the home page of 696 NYC, along with blue, green, and gold. This is the e-commerce site for a group of Japanese ceramics artists to sell their handmade wares.

The objects have all been carefully curated and created around a mission — to appreciate the daily act of gathering around a table to share a meal. With that timeless tradition in mind, the brown color scheme of the website couldn’t be any more appropriate.

Clint Agency

“Clint” stands for Clever Internet. It’s a digital product and service design agency with a brown color scheme website.

The background of Clint’s site is beige. Hard to believe, isn’t it? That a digital design agency would choose boring ol’ beige for their website? But they did. And it worked. They portrayed the company as nurturing and strong, but also down-to-earth.

But, they didn’t stop with beige — they are a design agency, after all. The site is fun to explore, with lots of color and stickers you can move around on the screen.

Tenuta Sant’Apollonia

Tenuta Sant’Apollonia is a small, family-run business that makes high-quality, organic olive oil. They bottle, label, and package the oil by hand as it is ordered. While the company has only been in business since 1993, they follow traditional methods and have extremely strict standards for their award-winning products. The pale beige linen background color of the website symbolizes tradition and sophistication.

Sam George

Sam George is a London-based graphic designer who focuses on visual identity. Perhaps to avoid distracting from his very colorful portfolio, he chose a solid chicory brown color background with large black text for his home page. Bland and somewhat conservative — not at all representative of his portfolio, which is fantastic. I can only assume this was to separate himself from the masses and choose a color that is rarely used in website design. If nothing else, the design is memorable.

Final Thoughts on Brown Websites

So there you have it — 20 of the best brown websites to inspire your next design! Brown may not be as common for web design as blue, purple, and green, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be just as beautiful and, more importantly, effective at representing your brand.

The color brown symbolizes dependability, reliability, safety, tradition, and sophistication — perfect qualities for a business website. It can also represent nature and being wholesome or down-to-earth. Does that describe your brand?

If you’re looking to create a warm and inviting online presence, brown just might be the perfect color for you. Be inspired by these brown website examples and design your own brown website today!

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