Chromatlas

Unit 12 · Designer's vocabulary

Ecru

HEX

#F0E6D2

RGB

240 230 210

HSL

40° 50% 88%

CMYK

0 4 13 6

Ecru or Beige?

Lighter and greyer than beige.

Compare: Beige

Language

Ecru is French for raw: écru, from Latin crudus, the root of crude. It names linen and silk left unbleached, in their natural state.

History

For most of history, white cloth was really ecru. Until about the 1700s, European bleachers could not get linen or wool truly white: Romans laid linen out in the dew or soaked it in milk, and the white habits of medieval monks were in practice ecru or grey. Drab has a similar story: from French drap, cloth, it named the dull brownish color of undyed fabric.

Kin

• Beige: Both mean undyed: ecru linen, beige wool
• Cerise: Another French word English kept as a color

In paintings

• The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai
• Rouen Cathedral (series), Claude Monet

Sources

• Etymonline, 'ecru'
• Pastoureau, White: The History of a Color (2023)
• Finlay, Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World (2021)
• Etymonline, 'drab'

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