Flags by color · 2 flags
Red, Yellow and Orange Flags
No flag is made of only red, yellow and orange. Just 2 flags, Andorra and Sri Lanka, include all three colors alongside others.
Flags with red, yellow and orange and other colors2
Which countries have red, yellow and orange flags?
No flag uses exactly these three warm colors. The two flags that contain all of them are Andorra and Sri Lanka, and both need extra colors to work.
Andorra has vertical blue, yellow and red bands with the national coat of arms in the center. Sri Lanka has a golden lion holding a sword on a maroon panel, set beside two stripes in orange and green, and surrounded by a yellow border. The orange stripe represents the Tamil community, and the green stripe the Muslim community.
Warm combinations such as red with yellow are common, and red-and-yellow flags appear in Spain, Vietnam and Montenegro. Orange is the unusual part, since it is one of the least used colors in national flags.
Why is orange so rare on flags?
Orange is hard to separate from red and yellow when a flag is seen from far away or in poor light, so most national flags choose red or yellow instead and keep orange for flags where it has a specific meaning.
Where orange does appear, it usually has a clear story. Ireland's orange stands for the Protestant tradition and green for the Catholic one. India uses saffron for courage and sacrifice. Niger and Ivory Coast use it for the Sahara and the savanna, and Bhutan uses it for its Buddhist tradition. Cyprus shows a copper-colored island on white. Several of these flags combine orange with white and green rather than red and yellow, which is why red, yellow and orange together are almost never found.
How can you tell similar flags apart?
Look for the emblem. Andorra has a coat of arms in the center of vertical bands, and Sri Lanka has a lion and a sword on a maroon panel. Flags that look like red-yellow-orange at first glance are often red-yellow flags such as Spain, Vietnam or North Macedonia, or orange-green-white flags such as Ireland and India. Use the grid above to compare the real colors side by side.
Frequently asked questions
What do yellow and orange flags mean?
Yellow usually stands for the sun, wealth or minerals, and orange for courage, land or a religious tradition, depending on the country.
Why does Sri Lanka's flag have orange?
The orange stripe stands for the Tamil community, and the green stripe for the Muslim community. The maroon panel with a lion represents the Sinhalese majority, and the golden border the other minorities.
How many flags contain red, yellow and orange?
Only 2 flags in our data contain all three: Andorra and Sri Lanka. Neither is built from just these colors, because both also include other colors such as blue, green or maroon. No national flag is a pure red, yellow and orange design.
Is orange rare on national flags?
Yes. In our data only 10 national flags contain orange: Andorra, Bhutan, Cyprus, India, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Marshall Islands, Niger, Sri Lanka and Zambia. That is why a flag mixing red, yellow and orange is so uncommon. Browse every color combination in our flags by color guide.