How it helps to know kanji

We recently learned a new color name: ちゃいろい, meaning (light) brown.
You might think, 'oh no, not another word to memorize', but you would never think that if you could read the kanji that make up this word: 茶色い consists of 茶 (cha), meaning 'tea', and 色 (iro), meaning 'color'. Tea color is indeed light brown.
Come to think of it, this actually makes more sense for us Westerners than for Japanese, whose tea is normally green...