Despite how obviously ugly they were, for almost an aeon, computer case makers stuck with beige coloured cases almost exclusively. Was it cheaper to manufacture? Did it help hide the dirt? Or was there just a big sale on beige paint when the first PC came out?
Cheaper to make everything one color and beige is fairly nondescript. Not beautiful but it doesn’t clash with anything. As the market grew, it became feasible to make other colors without losing economies of scale, or for market niches.
Along those lines, I think the goal was to help it blend in in the average mundane beige-y office or cubicle.
Right. It’s the same reason that beige and white are the official colors of apartment walls and ceilings. They’re not overly attractive colors, but you also don’t have to worry about people wrinkling their noses and saying “Good God, what art school dropout chose these colors?”
A major factor in the recent past (still a factor today!) is that you need a fairly standard color to match the fronts of your CD/DVD/Floppy drives. You have a choice now between beige and black.
Oh, yeah, good point. Walk into your local Office Supply Super Giant and notice what colors the file cabinets are. You’ll find beige and black.
Everything at work is beige and black, except for the Sun stations, and they really stick out just by being different.
As others have said or implied, it was already a standard colour scheme for office items before computers arrived on the scene.
It may have something to do with expediency; even in a non-smoking environment (which is not what offices have always been anyway), many plastics and paint finishes tend to discolour towards the yellow/beige as they mature; making them slightly beige in the first place conceals this.
if you bought a new item that was sparkling white in colour, the similar items you bought a year ago would look grubby and discoloured by comparison, because there is only really one shade of white; if you buy a new item that is beige, it just fits in with its older, slightly grubbier and discoloured companions because they just look like different shades of beige.
Obligatory pop-culture ref:
Unless you’re me and then you have, in the middle of the all-black case and drives, a beige CD burner with a translucent blue tray. But it’s hidden by the case door, which I keep shut all the time because it cuts the noise down.
Or you are one of those people who, for some reason, likes cases with windows and 50,000 LEDs on everything. (My case does have a couple of LEDs in the front, but I never connected them to the power supply.)
I love the concept of “beige,” a non-color.
I once had a beige Tshirt on which I painted, in beige lettering, "Beige: it’s not just a color, it’s a way of life.
I named a friend’s band “Neon Beige” in the mid eighties.
I used to work for an architecture firm with what I thought of as a limited color palate. I suggested that the name of the firm–SKB–stood for “some kinda beige.” They still use that witticism.
“Beige on beige” is another witticism of mine, used to describe that kind of decor that just mind-sucking boring.
I moved last year into a new apartment, with (gagck) beige carpeting. Pisses me off; I’m still accumulating throwrugs-of-color to pave over it with.
I do some interior design, and I have a canned rant, whenever anyone suggests a “neutral” color, like beige, for walls or floor. It goes something like this: “Beige is NOT a neutral color. Orange is a neutral color, or purple, or chartreuse. Beige walls give off dullness; they actually suck color out of other objects in a room. If you paint your walls beige, then you’re limited to other ‘warm, natural, grownup’ tones for the rest of your decor. Goose blue, or forest green, or–shudder–“bone.” Painting your walls beige automatically ages you at least 15 years. But if you paint your walls orange or purple, then it doesn’t MATTER what else you put in the room. Once you’ve crossed that color line, your options open up exponentially. You can still have browns and “neutrals” with orange walls, or you can go even wilder and have green and purple paisley. Try THAT with beige.”
Pooter parts are beige because it’s as close as we can get to a consensus: everybody hates it equally.