Talk:Beige box

IBM PC

The original IBM PC had a grey case, not beige, although the bezel was a light off-white. 121a0012 01:38, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

That is true, although I think that the person that wrote it was thinking of other "older" ones, such as the ps/2 Nevermind1534 (talk) 20:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Reason

I've also read the reason for beige was that it was the same colour as dust. That way the machines would still look OK even if they had some dust on them. Compare with dust on something black. // Liftarn (talk)

The YouTube video Why Are Old Computers Beige? offers the most likely explanation I've heard for the phenomenon. From page 174 of the book ThinkPad: A Different Shade of Blue, as quoted in the video:

In the late 1970s, Germany initiated workplace standards that required "light-value" colors on office computing equipment; these standards were soon picked up by other European and Scandinavian countries. Then, during the 1980s, any offerings other than gray and off-white were virtually eliminated across the computer industry because of cost and the European workplace standards.

On a perhaps related note, there was a version of the C64 popular in Germany (now known as the Aldi C64, after the German supermarket, although it was sold elsewhere too) that had a cream-coloured keyboard before the also-cream-coloured slimmer C64C was released worldwide. ZoeB (talk) 22:49, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

German standard dictated acceptable contrast ratio between text and background - not specifically beige

There was a reason why ALL office computers were beige. It was an ergonomics requirement based on a German standard. Companies and governments started using main frame computers in the 70s to streamline their work. But there was one BIG problem. All their data was on paper in filing cabinets. So through the 70s they hired thousands of file clerks to input paper data into mainframe computers. There was a copy holder mounted beside the monitor that held letter/legal size paper. So you had someone sitting in front of a terminal reading black text on a white paper all day, every day. Germany had strong workplace safety and ergonomics standards. (DIN - Deutsches Institut für Normung (German Institute for Standardization) They were concerned about constant refocusing between black text on white and white text on black. So they implemented standards that dictated an acceptable contrast ratio between text and background. In order to sell in Germany (and Europe), you had to follow the standards. White plastic was too hard to maintain so computer companies used beige with dark text on the keyboards. The standards were applied to typewriters, computer terminals and PCs. By the mid 80s, PCs were taking over and people were inputting data directly, so there was no need to transcribe large amounts of paper documents. So the core issue went away but the DIN standards hung on. The original reasoning was forgotten. It just became a ’standard’ that had to be complied with and computer companies were not going to risk the sale of 100s of computers because of a color choice. So beige was the safe option. How do I know this? I was an industrial designer working for a computer company starting in the early 80s. We had a design for a computer monitor and keyboard that was charcoal grey in color. We were forced to change it to beige to meet the standards and we were not happy about it. 69.118.190.218 (talk) 21:55, 16 August 2025 (UTC)