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Colors of flags

Pantone Matching System and flags
Shade of Blue in some flags
One color flags

Pantone Matching System and flags

The Flag Institute has used standard colours for some time, derived from the Pantone Matching System, but making allowance for the prevailing system of printing from four process colours. As has been pointed out, most Mac programmes cater for PMS colours, including the one we use for graphics, which is Adobe Illustrator. Our object is to restrain the growth of colours to unmanageable proportions, and so we have listed some standard flag colours, with a few allowable variations. These variations come into effect where a flag's specifications call for them, eg 'azul turquesi' in some Central American flags, 'Harvard Blue' in the flag of Israel, and where official specifications list either Pantone matches, eg Finland, Estonia, Australia, or other colour identification matches than can be 'translated' into Pantone matches. The standard PMS colours are: 032, red; 286, blue; 354, green; 109, yellow; 165, orange; and 167, brown. Some frequent variations are: 185, red for 'Old Glory Red' also used in Australia; 280 blue, ditto; 355 green as in the flag of Saudi Arabia, etc. Gold is 116, as in the flag of Europe and of Germany, and silver is 420. So far we have kept to our resolution to use not more than 30 shades of colour. A printout of these is available on request. Our position is that flags normally employ the 'default' colours unless some good reason can be shown for departing from them.
william crampton 14-OCT-1995

Shade of Blue in some flags

On 2-26 Bill Grimes-Wyatt stated "there is no question that the flags of Israel and Greece are a light blue, not dark blue as your charts might suggest."

Blues can be very confusing. In Flags Through the Ages and Across the World (W. Smith, 1975) you will find that Israel and Greece both use a fairly dark blue, though they are slightly different from each other. The Israeli blue is as dark as any of the Blue Ensigns shown in the book, and the Greek flag is of a very slightly lighter shade. They both stand in sharp contrast to the light blue of Argentina, Botswana, Fiji, etc. The Greek flag, like the Finnish flag, used to be what we would think of as "light blue" but both have changed to darker shades. I have a Greek flag made in Greece of paper and it is of the lighter blue shade. I purchased it over a dozen years ago, so I don't know what shade of blue the locals would recognize as proper, but according to regulations it is no longer "light blue."

nick artimovich 26-FEB-1996

The blue colour in Israel's flag is definitely dark. Some time ago I got a folder on national symbols from the Embassy of Israel in Washington. In the flag drawing the blue is dark, the text defines it as Yale Blue.

jan oskar engene 27-FEB-1996

The flag of Israel was a dark blue(navy) untill the late 50's or early 60's at which time it was changed to a lighter blue. This is from memory.

ronniekay 27-FEB-1996

The odd thing is that at the time I called the Israeli mission to the U.N. to verify the color before producing the flag, and the impression I got was that they didn't care which color was used.

R. Nathan Bliss 27-FEB-1996

Actually, the color is officialy declared to be "blue". However, it can be any kind of blue - light, cyan or whatever shade, so long as it's 'blue' and have the 'magen david' sign in between the lines.
goren s 29-FEB-1996