🇫🇷 The colours of France
7 meanings recorded, 58 colours tied to the country and 4 colour cities.
France’s national colours are blue, white, and red, arranged in three vertical stripes on the flag. Blue and red come from Paris’s traditional colours, while white is linked to the monarchy and the nation. The tricolour stands for unity, moderation, and the ideals of the French Revolution.
Where no official value is given, the swatch shows the colour family, not the exact shade.
- Blue and red are Paris’s traditional colours; white is the ancient French colour.
- The tricolour flag was adopted during the French Revolution in 1790.
- No official law defines the exact shades of blue, white, or red.
- The flag’s proportions are 2:3, with equal stripes except in the navy.
- The colours are sometimes linked to liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The colours of the flag of France
The French flag features three vertical stripes: blue nearest the hoist, then white, then red. Blue and red are Paris’s historic colours, seen on the city’s coat of arms and linked to Saints Martin and Denis. White, described as the ‘ancient French colour’, was added to unite revolutionary Paris with the nation’s royal past. Officially, the flag’s colours are not tied to a single meaning, but they are often said to symbolise liberty (blue), equality (white), and fraternity (red), echoing the revolutionary motto. The tricolour has come to represent unity and moderation, blending royalist and republican elements.
How the colours were chosen of France
Before the tricolour, French flags featured blue shields with gold fleurs-de-lis on white, or plain white banners for the monarchy. During the French Revolution, the Paris militia adopted blue and red cockades, later adding white to create a national symbol. The tricolour flag was first adopted in 1790, with its current blue-white-red order set in 1794. The flag was replaced by a plain white flag during the Bourbon Restoration but returned after the July Revolution of 1830. Since then, it has remained France’s national flag, with only minor changes in shade and proportion.
Official shades and rules of France
The French constitution names the flag’s colours as blue, white, and red, but does not specify exact shades. Traditionally, the blue is navy, though a lighter blue was used from 1974. Both versions have been used, but since 2020, the darker blue is standard at the Élysée Palace. The flag’s proportions are 2:3, with equal stripes except in the navy, where the stripes are 30:33:37 to account for visual effects when flying.
The facts in this overview come from the Wikipedia article "Flag of France", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Rang rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
What colours mean in France
Customs vary by region, faith and family; these are the meanings most often recorded.
The red Phrygian cap, a soft cap with the tip pulled forward, became the sign of liberty in the Revolution. Marianne, the figure of the Republic, still wears it.
Politics and protestCourageSource: Phrygian capFrom late 2018, protesters against fuel taxes and living costs wore the yellow high-visibility vests that every driver must carry. They became known as the gilets jaunes.
Politics and protestAngerSource: Yellow vests protestsThe leader of the Tour de France wears the yellow jersey. It was introduced in 1919 and matches the yellow paper of L'Auto, the newspaper that ran the race.
Festival and celebrationPrideSource: General classification in the Tour de FranceBlue was the colour of the French kings, whose arms were gold lilies on blue. It is the first band of the tricolour, and national sports teams are called Les Bleus.
Politics and protestRoyalty and powerPrideSource: Bleu de France (colour)Toulouse is called la Ville Rose, the pink city, for the soft pink brick of its old buildings.
Nature and renewalSource: ToulouseWhite was the colour of the Bourbon kings. In the tricolour it sits between the blue and red of Paris, and after 1815 the restored monarchy flew a plain white flag.
Royalty and powerPolitics and protestSource: Flag of FranceFrench queens once mourned in white, a custom called deuil blanc. Mary, Queen of Scots, was painted in white mourning after the death of her husband, Francis II.
Mourning and deathRoyalty and powerGriefSource: MourningColour and feeling in France
French speaks of 'black anger', colère noire, and German of annoying oneself black, sich schwarz ärgern.
Picasso painted almost wholly in cold blues from about 1901 to 1904, in Barcelona and Paris, after the death of his friend Carles Casagemas.
To brood in French is 'broyer du noir', to grind black, and dark thoughts are 'idées noires'.
Great fear is blue in French and Italian: 'une peur bleue', a blue fear, and 'fifa blu', a blue funk.
Britain, France, Ireland and New Zealand followed Australia in requiring cigarette packs in the same drab brown.
In his Blue Period, about 1901 to 1904, Picasso painted beggars, prisoners and solitary figures in cold blues.
The twelfth and thirteenth century windows of Chartres cathedral are famous for a deep blue glass often called Chartres blue.
To see 'la vie en rose', life in pink, is to see the good in everything. Édith Piaf's 1940s song carried the phrase around the world.
Colour cities of France
🇫🇷 Painted half-timbered AlsaceColmarTimber-framed houses in pink, yellow, blue and green lean over small canals in eastern France.
🇫🇷 The lemon townMentonThe last French town before Italy, with an old quarter in ochre and yellow and a famous lemon festival.
🇫🇷 La Ville RoseToulouseThe pink city of south-west France, built of flat rosy bricks, once rich on a blue dye plant.
🇫🇷 The ochre villageRoussillonA Provençal hill village built on, and painted with, cliffs of red, orange and yellow ochre.Colours tied to France
Blue
Woad
A blue dye once vital to Europe's textile trade, made from the leaves of a flowering plantDye · 🇫🇷 France +3
Red
Rubia
A group of plants whose roots once dyed cloth and paint a lasting redColour named from nature · 🇪🇬 Egypt +5
Brown
Catechu
A brown plant extract used as a dye, tannin, and preservativeColour named from nature · 🇯🇵 Japan +2
#A91101
Turkey red
A lasting bright red dye for cotton, made from madder root by a complex processNamed shade · 🇹🇷 Turkey +4
Purple and violet
Orcein
A reddish dye made from lichens, changing colour with acidityDye · 🇳🇴 Norway +4
#FADA5E
Stil de grain yellow
A yellow pigment made from buckthorn berries, once known as 'pink' or 'sap green'Pigment · 🇫🇷 France +2
Brown
Caramel
A golden-brown colour and sweet made by heating sugar until it brownsNamed shade · 🇫🇷 France +2
Red
Rose madder
A red dye and pigment from the roots of a climbing plantDye · 🇮🇳 India +4
Red
Brazilwood redybyrapytanga
A deep orange-red dye from the heartwood of Brazil’s national treeDye · 🇧🇷 Brazil +1
Yellow
Weld
A plant once prized for its bright yellow dyeDye · 🇫🇷 France +3
Purple and violet
Turnsole
A blue-purple dye once prized for manuscripts and textilesDye · 🇮🇳 India +2
Purple and violet
Chrozophoridin
The blue-purple dye compound from the fruit of Chrozophora tinctoriaDye · 🇫🇷 France +2
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Caramel: No machine-readable author provided. Rainer Zenz assumed (based on cop, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Orcein: W.carter, CC0, source
- Rubia: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Woad: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Catechu: Maša Sinreih in Valentina Vivod, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Rose madder: Carstor, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Brazilwood red: Der Kolonist, CC BY 2.5, source
- Weld: Stefan.lefnaer, CC BY-SA 3.0 at, source
- Turnsole: Solanum, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Colmar Fr: --sinava--, CC BY 2.0, source
- Menton Fr: Jpgross, Public domain, source
- Toulouse Fr: Tonio94 ( talk · contribs ), CC BY-SA 2.5, source
- Roussillon Fr: Hawobo at German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, source