Gram husk and groundnut shell are cheap and abundantly available agricultural waste materials in India. A systematic study on the adsorption of some model dyes from aqueous solution on these low-cost adsorbents has been attempted. Model dyes used were Methylene Blue, Rhodamine B, Congo Red, Eosine Y and Metanil Yellow. Equilibrium, kinetics and column experiments were performed. Effects of different process variables have been studied. Equilibrium data fitted well in Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm equations. A model using Freundlich equation has been developed for interpretation of kinetic data. Other models such as Lagergren equation and pseudo second order equation were also used. Of these models, pseudo second order equation was found to be the most satisfactory. Column experiments were carried out with gram-husk and Rhodamine B. The data could be correlated well with BDST model. Copyright © 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.