A pale creamy brown colour, the colour of some un-dyed leather particularly chamois, that is used as a cleaning cloth in its natural state. Said to have been first used as a general colour name to describe a coat lining that was the same colour as un-dyed buffalo leather. At the rime this leather was used for protection – as a ‘buffer’ between polished items and worn by soldiers going into battle.
As a mixture of russet and citron it is an interesting colour with some depth, and the colpur of warm stone and sand, cliff faces. Prairie and savannah, in birds and moths.
As a colour description a word not very much used now probably because buff, along with beige and mushroom were commonly used to describe the most boring of neutral paint colours in the mid to late 20C.