White goods are washing machines, dish washers, fridges…, while brown goods are the audio/video stuff (TVs, stereo).

Kind of old fashion but based on the typical color of these items (mostly from a couple of decades or more ago: washing machines and fridges are in many colors and A/V stuff is almost always black and/or silver)

According to Wikipedia, it seems to be mostly a UK idiom.

This idiom appears exactly the same in Dutch (and thus possibly other languages too?)

Italian too. We could probably say that this is an European thing. ;)

German as well :) (Weisse Ware / braune Ware)

In French too (produits blancs/bruns).

Portuguese too: branco/marrom

Línea blanca in Spanish

Browngoods refers to Bakelite. Once, all radios / radiograms were made of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite

white goods are fridges, washing machines and the like. brown goods are tvs, stereos etc

>brown goods are tvs, stereos etc

Huh. I've always heard those referred to (on the few rare occasions) as black goods. Maybe it's generational.