You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding articles in French and German. (June 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,631 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Bistre (couleur)]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Bistre (couleur)}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Bistre (or bister) is a pigment made from soot. Historically, beechwood was burned to produce the soot, which was boiled and diluted with water. Many Old Masters used bistre as the ink for their wash paintings.^[1] Bistre's appearance is generally of a dark grayish brown, with a yellowish cast.

Bistre has also been used to name colors resembling the pigment, typically shades of brown. The first recorded use of bistre as a color name in English was in 1727; another name for the color bistre is soot brown.^[1]

Bistre
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#3D2B1F
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(61, 43, 31)
HSV (h, s, v)	(24°, 49%, 24%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(19, 14, 39°)
Source	Internet
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Dark yellowish brown
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Among other colors, bistre is the name of a very dark shade of grayish brown (the version shown on the immediate right).

Bistre (ISCC-NBS #94) (M&P)
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#967117
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(150, 113, 23)
HSV (h, s, v)	(43°, 85%, 59%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(50, 58, 58°)
Source	ISCC-NBS/M&P
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Light olive brown
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the color bistre brown, a medium brownish tone of the color bistre, also known as soot brown.

This is the tone of bistre that most closely matches the color sample in the 1930 book A Dictionary of Color by Maerz and Paul.^[2]

This tone of bistre is the color of the ink that was used by the Old Masters for their drawings.

The normalized color coordinates for bistre brown are identical to the color names drab, sand dune, and mode beige, which were first recorded as color names in English, respectively, in 1686,^[3] 1925,^[4] and 1928.^[5]

Bistre (Pourpre.com)
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#856D4D
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(133, 109, 77)
HSV (h, s, v)	(34°, 42%, 52%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(48, 30, 55°)
Source	Pourpre.com
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Moderate olive brown
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

At right is displayed the color French bistre, which is the tone of bistre called bistre in the Pourpre.com color list, a color list widely popular in France.

For pictures of bistre colored postage stamps, see the French Wikipedia article on the color bistre.

Bistre (G&S)
Color coordinates
Hex triplet	#80755A
sRGBB (r, g, b)	(128, 117, 90)
HSV (h, s, v)	(43°, 30%, 50%)
CIELChuv (L, C, h)	(50, 22, 68°)
Source	Gallego & Sanz (2005)
ISCC–NBS descriptor	Grayish olive
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte)

Spanish bistre is the color that is called bistre (the Spanish word for "bistre" is the same as the English word) in the Guía de coloraciones (Guide to colorations) by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm.

Look up bistre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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