Buff (colour) Buff (colour) Buff is the pale orange-brown colour of the undyed leather of several animals. As an RYB quaternary colour, it is the colour produced by an equal mix of the tertiary colours citron and russet. The first recorded use of the word "buff" to describe a colour was in "The London Gazette" of 1686, describing a uniform to be "...a Red Coat with a Buff-colour'd lining". It referred to the colour of undyed buffalo leather, such as soldiers wore as some protection: an eyewitness to the death in the Battle of Edgehill (1642) of Sir Edmund Verney noted "he
Primary color The Natural Color System is also directly inspired by the psychological primaries. There are numerous competing primary colour systems throughout history. Scholars and scientists engaged in debate over which hues best describe the primary color sensations of the eye. Thomas Young proposed red, green, and violet as the three primary colors, while James Clerk Maxwell favoured changing violet to blue. Hermann von Helmholtz proposed "a slightly purplish red, a vegetation-green, slightly yellowish, and an ultramarine-blue" as a trio. In modern understanding, human cone cells do not correspond precisely to a specific set of primary colors, as each cone type responds