page_title: Flag of the United States
section_title: Colors
hierarchical_section_title: Flag of the United States / Design / Colors
caption_attribution_description: English: A subdued-color version of the flag of the United States, in the form of a patch intended to blend with urban camouflage.
context_page_description: The flag of the United States of America, often referred to as the American flag or the U.S. flag, is the national flag of the United States. It consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows, where rows of six stars alternate with rows of five stars. The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 states of the United States of America, and the 13 stripes represent the thirteen British colonies that declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and became the first states in the U.S. Nicknames for the flag include the Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, and the Star-Spangled Banner.
context_section_description: The exact red, white, and blue colors to be used in the flag are specified with reference to the CAUS Standard Color Reference of America, 10th edition. Specifically, the colors are "White",  "Old Glory Red", and "Old Glory Blue". The CIE coordinates for the colors of the 9th edition of the Standard Color Card were formally specified in JOSA in 1946. These colors form the standard for cloth, and there is no perfect way to convert them to RGB for display on screen or CMYK for printing. The "relative" coordinates in the following table were found by scaling the luminous reflectance relative to the flag's white.
  As with the design, the official colors are only officially required for flags produced for the U.S. federal government, and other colors are often used for mass-market flags, printed reproductions, and other products intended to evoke flag colors. The practice of using more saturated colors than the official cloth is not new. As Taylor, Knoche, and Granville wrote in 1950: "The color of the official wool bunting [of the blue field] is a very dark blue, but printed reproductions of the flag, as well as merchandise supposed to match the flag, present the color as a deep blue much brighter than the official wool."
  Sometimes, Pantone Matching System (PMS) approximations to the flag colors are used. One set was given on the website of the U.S. embassy in London as early as 1998; the website of the U.S. embassy in Stockholm claimed in 2001 that those had been suggested by Pantone, and that the U.S. Government Printing Office preferred a different set. A third red was suggested by a California Military Department document in 2002. In 2001, the Texas legislature specified that the colors of the Texas flag should be "(1)  the same colors used in the United States flag; and (2)  defined as numbers 193 (red) and 281 (dark blue) of the Pantone Matching System." The 2012 Identity and Marking Standards published by the Department of State specify PMS 282C blue and PMS 193C red, along with the corresponding RGB and CMYK values from Adobe InDesign 6.
caption: A subdued-color flag patch, similar to style worn on the United States Army's ACU uniform. The patch is normally worn reversed on the right upper sleeve. See explanation in "Display on uniforms" section below.
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