🇷🇴 The colours of Romania

Romania’s flag is a vertical tricolour of blue, yellow and red. These colours have roots in the country’s medieval heraldry and have stood for liberty, justice and fraternity since the 19th century. The exact shades were legally defined in 2023.

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

• The tricolour dates to the 19th century but the colours are older.
• Blue, yellow and red were first used together for self-determination in 1821.
• The flag’s current form was restored after the 1989 revolution.
• Official colour shades were set in law in 2023.
• During the Communist era, the flag had a coat of arms on the yellow band.

The colours of the flag of Romania

Romania’s flag shows three vertical stripes of equal width: blue at the flagpole, then yellow, then red. The current design dates from 1989, but the tricolour itself has been used in various forms since the 19th century. Official meanings for the colours were first recorded during the 1848 revolution: blue for liberty, yellow for justice, and red for fraternity. These associations are widely recognised, though at times other meanings have been used, such as faith, golden future and heart’s fire during the Communist period.

How the colours were chosen of Romania

Blue, yellow and red have appeared on Romanian flags and coats of arms since at least the 14th century, used separately or in pairs by Moldavian and Wallachian rulers. The three colours were first combined on a flag in the early 19th century, with the tricolour becoming a symbol of Romanian unity and self-determination during the 1848 revolution. The arrangement and order of the stripes shifted over time, but by 1867 the vertical blue-yellow-red layout was fixed. The flag survived changes in regime, including the Communist era, when a coat of arms was added and later removed after the 1989 revolution.

Official shades and rules of Romania

The flag’s proportions are set at 2:3, with three equal vertical stripes: blue at the hoist, followed by yellow and red. Before 2023, the law named the pigments as cobalt blue, chrome yellow and vermilion red, but did not specify exact shades. Since 2023, the law defines the colours precisely using Pantone, CMYK and RGB values for print and digital use.