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Heraldic colors

Heraldry names seven colours and refuses to say what any of them look like. That is not a gap in the record: a blazon is written in words so that the same arms can be painted, carved, embroidered and cast, and all four be correct. The values below are one common rendering, not a specification.

Why there is no hex code for azure

The College of Arms, which has granted arms in England since 1484, is unambiguous about it. There are no fixed shades for heraldic colours; if a grant names its tinctures as Gules, Azure and Argent, then so long as the blue is not too light and the red not too orange, purple or pink, it is up to the artist which particular shades to use.

That is a stronger position than the one most flags are in. A national flag usually has no published hex because nobody got round to publishing one, and the authoritative form turns out to be dyed cloth. A blazon has no hex because specifying one would defeat the point. The written description is the artefact, and every execution of it is a performance.

Purpure has drifted furthest. Grants made by the Tudor herald Thomas Wriothesley use a reddish purple for it that would now be called murrey, and nobody at the time considered that wrong. The values here are measured from the standard illustration of the tinctures, which is one convention among several that modern heraldic software uses, and they disagree with one another.

The rule of tincture, measured

The first rule of heraldry is that metal must not be placed on metal, nor colour on colour. A gold lion belongs on a red field, not on a silver one. The reason given has always been legibility: a device that cannot be told apart at distance or in poor light has failed at the only job it has.

That is the same problem the WCAG contrast ratios were written to solve, about eight hundred years later. So it is worth asking whether the medieval rule survives being measured. It does.

All 10 combinations the rule permits clear AA for large text, and 7 of the 11 it forbids fail. Large text is the right threshold here: a charge on a shield is a big shape seen from far away, which is exactly the case that allowance exists for.

Permitted, and all of them pass

  • Or on Vert3
  • Or on Gules3.8
  • Argent on Vert4.1
  • Argent on Gules5.1
  • Or on Purpure5.5
  • Or on Azure6.1
  • Argent on Purpure7.4
  • Argent on Azure8.3
  • Or on Sable15.5
  • Argent on Sable21

Forbidden, and mostly for good reason

  • Vert on Sable5.1
  • Gules on Sable4.1
  • Sable on Purpure2.8
  • Azure on Sable2.5
  • Azure on Vert2
  • Vert on Purpure1.8
  • Gules on Azure1.6
  • Or on Argent1.4
  • Gules on Purpure1.4
  • Gules on Vert1.3
  • Azure on Purpure1.1

The 2 exceptions are both against Sable, which is black and therefore contrasts with everything. The rule is categorical and contrast is continuous, so a rule this simple was always going to be slightly over-strict somewhere, and being over-strict is the safe direction to be wrong in.

The pair worth looking at is Or on Argent, at 1.4 to 1. Gold on silver is the most famous violation in heraldry, used by the Kingdom of Jerusalem and still visible on the flag of the Vatican, and the breach was read as marking exceptional status rather than as an error. The measurement says the rule was right to forbid it: those two are the hardest pair on the board to tell apart.

See the tinctures on a designCheck every pairMaryland, drawn from arms

Common questions

What are the heraldic tinctures?
The colours of heraldry, named in Norman French. Seven are in common use: two metals, Or (gold) and Argent (silver or white), and five colours, Gules (red), Azure (blue), Vert (green), Sable (black) and Purpure (purple). There are also furs, which are patterns rather than colours, and two rare colours called stains.
What is the hex code for azure in heraldry?
There is not one, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. The College of Arms states that there are no fixed shades for heraldic colours: so long as the blue is not too light, it is up to the artist which blue to use. A blazon is a specification written in words precisely so that the same arms can be painted, carved, embroidered and cast and all four be correct. The values on this page are one common rendering, measured from the standard illustration, and are labelled that way.
What is the rule of tincture?
The first rule of heraldry: metal must not be placed on metal, nor colour on colour. A gold charge belongs on a red field, not on a silver one. It exists so that a device stays recognisable at distance and in poor light, which is the same problem WCAG contrast ratios were written to solve about eight hundred years later.
Does the rule of tincture actually produce readable contrast?
Measured against WCAG, yes. All 10 combinations the rule permits clear AA for large text at 3 to 1, and 7 of the 11 it forbids fail. The tightest permitted pair is Or on Vert at exactly 3 to 1, right on the threshold.
Why is gold on silver forbidden when both are bright?
That is exactly why. Or on Argent measures 1.4 to 1, well under any usable threshold, because the two metals sit close together in lightness. It is the most famous violation in heraldry: the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem put gold crosses on silver, and the breach was read as marking the kingdom's exceptional status rather than as a mistake.
Which tinctures do the furs and stains cover?
The furs are patterns rather than tinctures in the ordinary sense: ermine is black tails on white, vair is a repeating blue and white bell shape, and both come in several variants. The stains are murrey (mulberry), sanguine (blood red) and tenné (orange), rare in practice and traditionally said to mark some dishonour. None of them has a fixed shade either.
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