🇱🇷 The colours of Liberia

Liberia’s flag uses red, white, and blue, echoing the United States flag to reflect its origins among freed people from America and the Caribbean. Red stands for courage, white for moral excellence, and the single white star on blue marks Liberia as Africa’s first independent republic.

Where no official value is given, the swatch shows the colour family, not the exact shade.

• The flag has eleven stripes for the signers of Liberia’s Declaration of Independence.
• Red means courage; white means moral excellence in official symbolism.
• The single white star marks Liberia as Africa’s first independent republic.
• The flag was designed by a committee of seven women in 1847.
• Liberia’s flag is widely used by foreign ships as a flag of convenience.

The colours of the flag of Liberia

The Liberian flag features eleven horizontal stripes in red and white, with a blue square in the top left corner holding a single large white star. The red stripes are said to stand for courage, while the white stripes represent moral excellence. The blue canton is meant to symbolise the African continent, and the white star within it marks Liberia as the first independent republic in Africa. These meanings are officially stated. The flag’s design closely follows that of the United States, reflecting Liberia’s founding history.

How the colours were chosen of Liberia

Liberia’s first flag, created in 1827 while still a colony, was nearly identical to the United States flag but with a white cross in place of the stars. Ahead of independence, a group of seven women, all born in the United States, designed the current flag, which was adopted in August 1847. The flag’s unveiling was a major public event in Monrovia. Over time, the flag has appeared on stamps and ships, and in 1915, Flag Day was established as a national holiday. A commission in the 1970s reviewed the flag but recommended no changes.

Official shades and rules of Liberia

A 1961 law specifies the flag must have eleven alternating red and white stripes, starting and ending with red. The blue square (canton) sits in the upper left and extends down to the bottom of the third red stripe. A large five-pointed white star is centred in the blue canton. The law does not specify the exact size of the star.