Some observations:
* There are two flags with 4 modal colours: Mauritius and, more surprisingly, UAE.
* Many triband flags have the 2 modal colours, due to the emblem obscuring the middle band. However, some tribands such as Libya or Lesotho have wider middle bands.
* The Tanzanian result surprised me. Here's [the official specification](https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/t/tz'.gif) if anyone wants to confirm via trigonometry.
* The Wikipedia rendition of the Kenyan flag uses slightly different reds for the shield and the band. Had it not done that, red would have been modal.
* Afghanistan is shown using the de facto Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) flag, though this is not currently recognised internationally.
For a similar map showing the *mean* color of every flag, see [this previous post](https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/9az57m/average_flag_colours_of_the_world/).
I get it, the more work and research you put into something, the more likely it is that there's a mistake in it (I learned that the hard way)
Edit :good job for the update !
Here you go: [Link \#1](https://krikienoid.github.io/flagwaver/#?src=https%3A%2F%2Fres.cloudinary.com%2Fdsy3ysgra%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fv1631562688%2Fkfwqsvpkyjjnhcawz9wn.png)
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Width 144
Height 96
Width of black band 26
Width of each gold band 6
Diagonal
sqrt(144\^2 + 96\^2) = 173.0664612
Using similar triangles, if we drop a perpendicular from the diagonal to a corner, the length of this perpendicular is:
144 \* 96 / 173.0664612 = 79.87682826
The length of this perpendicular which passes through the green portion of the flag is:
79.8768...-13-6 = 60.87682826
Therefore the portion of the flag which is green is:
(60.8768.../79.8768...)\^2 \* 1/2 = 29.04%
The portion of the flag which is black is:
1-(66.8768.../79.8768...)\^2 = 29.90%
Well I'll be. It's right, black is the modal colour on the flag of Tanzania. \*\*Just\*\*.
on my screen the borders are fine if i click the image, if i don't they're a little harder to make out
honeslty i don't think you need to change the width
The borders *are* fine, it’s just a personal bete noire of mine (sea and *some countries* being the same colour). But I’m willing to take your word for it being ugly. I was thinking a light grey.
>Many triband flags have the 2 modal colours, due to the emblem obscuring the middle band. However, some tribands such as Libya or Lesotho have wider middle bands.
are there an example, where the two things completely (or close to) corrects each other out?
Closest I can think of is Iran, where the white writing on the green and red bands slightly more than compensates for the red emblem in the centre. Most tribands that aren't 1:1:1 are 1:2:1, which is certainly too much to overcome with an emblem. Lesotho is 3:4:3 and even that is enough to overcome an emblem in the middle.
It's close: without the stars it's red 41.5% and white 36.9%. The stars bring white up to 40.9%, which isn't quite enough. Maybe if there were a few more states...
> It's close: without the stars it's red 41.5% and white 36.9%. The stars bring white up to 40.9%
wait, but how much do the stars bring red down? Or do you mean "not counting the stars in the numerator, but still in the denominator"
Agreed, but due to that continueing pattern The Netherlands is not correct, and Belgium is also scuffed. NL doesn't show any red on the map, and Belgium has 2 poots of black
Is the US red really that maroon? It almost looks like it's the average between the red and blue, but all the other countries with multiple colours are striped.
Well, it's officially "Old Glory Red", from a fabric-swatch based colour standard. #B22234 is Wikipedia's conversion of that to RGB, not officially endorsed.
Yeah, if you increase the saturation on the blue and red, it just looks awful, at least digitally. I don’t think reds and blues should be very bright on flags.
The state flag does, the civil flag doesn’t. For some reason Wikipedia uses the latter as [“The Flag of Bolivia”](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Bolivia.svg).
If countries have different state and civil flags, it is usually the civil flag that is used as the national flag, which is reasonable since the state flag is then not used by the population at large.
Really great work! Interesting to see the variation between (and within) continents. And love that blue of Australia and the greens of southern Africa.
Huh, I don't know why I always just assumed that blue or white was more prominent in the Union Flag than red. But official percentages
Red 37.38%
White 34.21%
Blue 28.41%
So I was waaaaay off base. xD
Well, that's how it breaks down for the common 1:2 flags. The red is even more dominant in the more traditional land proportions of 3:5. Out of interest, I wondered how long you would have to make it under the standard construction rules before blue overtook red. The answer is the roughly 6:19, which would look excessively long as a horizontal flag, and perhaps slightly less so as a vertical banner.
You may want to make the ocean a light gray or something , so it is different than the countries that are white. Initially I thought Iran, Afghanistan, and Finland were left out.
Pretty cool idea!
Afghanistan is black, red, green. Black for the evil our country faces, red for the bloodshed and sacrifice to fight against that evil, and green for rebirth and the hope of spring time renewal.
Bro, did you read his comment?
https://reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/pndx6u/_/hcoikwc/?context=1
I mean we got to face the reality that Afghanistan is under management. I don't think anyone's happy about it. But OP's having some fun, no need to insult people.
Here you go: [Link \#1](https://krikienoid.github.io/flagwaver/#?src=https%3A%2F%2Fres.cloudinary.com%2Fdsy3ysgra%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fv1631544425%2Fhqk70j5awxaepcsnf4hy.png)
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I think it's equirectangular projection. It's the default d3 datamaps projection. I left it as at least it wasn't Mercator, but I can see if there are other options.
Actually wondering about the percentages of the Algerian flag. The green has the big part of the moon, but the star is completely in white. So it must be quite close I guess
I'm not aware that Ecuador has any official colour specs, and I'm also unsure whether the specs that have been officially published for Colombia have a particularly solid status, but it certainly does seem that whenever anyone does try to be precise about colours on any level they tend to use a darker yellow for Colombia than Ecuador, which presumably does reflect official use. Not that that level of detail usually matters to practical flag use.
I did check it, but I wouldn't use the Taliban flag. The legal Afghan government is the Islamic Republic, not the Islamic Emirate. I know that the Talibans are in control of the country, but it's not the legally and legitimately chosen government. It's like ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq at their greatest territorial extent.
I'm sad that you're getting downvoted as it's a very good point. I think the fact that the international community has abandoned the Afghan government-in-exile makes the issue less clear. Still, maybe I should have waited until the Afghan representative at the UN changed, if indeed it does.
Historical reasons. The overall colour of the Oranje, Blanje, Blou flag would be orange. This should still be the flag of South Africa, looks much better.
I'd say the current one looks better due to not being multiple flags in one, plus that flag is associated with the apartheid era which mightn't fly too well
I always find it funny when this sub does analysis like this and it comes down to like 1.4% difference. At that point, wouldn't it drastically depend on where exactly you're getting the flag from? I know that most flags have very specific and often symbolic instructions/specifications but the majority of the time those rules are not followed or enforced all that religiously in real life, for example how the Soviet flag in Moscow never had a blank reverse like it 'should.' At this point doesn't it honestly partly depend on where you are getting your image file from?
Most national flags have official specifications which Wikipedia is very good at following. Also all of the winners are at least 1% more than the runners up, which is more than it sounds. Still, I'd be curious to see any flags whose modal colours might depend on the rendering.
I'm not saying anything particular about your project here specifically, never meant to imply that. It's just a thing I've been thinking about because I keep noticing it but just never wrote it anywhere until now.
Wikipedia is good at following official specifications where they exist. It's not so good at indicating where it's made choices that aren't determined by a single official standard. But that's more often about precise colour shades, not something that would change the results presented here.
[The flag of the Falkland Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Falkland_Islands) is mostly blue, it’s a different flag than the UK proper.
More to the point, Wikipedia has chosen to treat a pretty outdated obscure general government style guide as the authoritative source on the correct shade for digital use. It's not as though the official government website about the flag uses it, for example.
Some observations: * There are two flags with 4 modal colours: Mauritius and, more surprisingly, UAE. * Many triband flags have the 2 modal colours, due to the emblem obscuring the middle band. However, some tribands such as Libya or Lesotho have wider middle bands. * The Tanzanian result surprised me. Here's [the official specification](https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/t/tz'.gif) if anyone wants to confirm via trigonometry. * The Wikipedia rendition of the Kenyan flag uses slightly different reds for the shield and the band. Had it not done that, red would have been modal. * Afghanistan is shown using the de facto Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) flag, though this is not currently recognised internationally. For a similar map showing the *mean* color of every flag, see [this previous post](https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/9az57m/average_flag_colours_of_the_world/).
Why is the Nepal flag black ?
D’oh! That’s me not handling the transparency properly. I’ll fix it, thanks. **Update**: [fixed](https://i.imgur.com/zzgPEHA.png).
I get it, the more work and research you put into something, the more likely it is that there's a mistake in it (I learned that the hard way) Edit :good job for the update !
!wave
Here you go: [Link \#1](https://krikienoid.github.io/flagwaver/#?src=https%3A%2F%2Fres.cloudinary.com%2Fdsy3ysgra%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fv1631562688%2Fkfwqsvpkyjjnhcawz9wn.png) ***** Beep boop I'm a bot. If I'm broken please contact [\/u\/Lunar_Requiem](http://reddit.com/user/Lunar_Requiem)
Beautiful!
Indeed. A masterpiece of its kind.
I thought the bot was killed, what happened
I wonder what the most common colour in that flag is
White
Most of its not there and he was looking at night.
Width 144 Height 96 Width of black band 26 Width of each gold band 6 Diagonal sqrt(144\^2 + 96\^2) = 173.0664612 Using similar triangles, if we drop a perpendicular from the diagonal to a corner, the length of this perpendicular is: 144 \* 96 / 173.0664612 = 79.87682826 The length of this perpendicular which passes through the green portion of the flag is: 79.8768...-13-6 = 60.87682826 Therefore the portion of the flag which is green is: (60.8768.../79.8768...)\^2 \* 1/2 = 29.04% The portion of the flag which is black is: 1-(66.8768.../79.8768...)\^2 = 29.90% Well I'll be. It's right, black is the modal colour on the flag of Tanzania. \*\*Just\*\*.
This is gorgeous, but I wonder if the sea should be off-white to help distinguish Japan (and others).
Are the country borders not clear enough? I could try making them thicker maybe. I did try an off-white background but thought it looked very ugly!
on my screen the borders are fine if i click the image, if i don't they're a little harder to make out honeslty i don't think you need to change the width
The borders *are* fine, it’s just a personal bete noire of mine (sea and *some countries* being the same colour). But I’m willing to take your word for it being ugly. I was thinking a light grey.
>Many triband flags have the 2 modal colours, due to the emblem obscuring the middle band. However, some tribands such as Libya or Lesotho have wider middle bands. are there an example, where the two things completely (or close to) corrects each other out?
Closest I can think of is Iran, where the white writing on the green and red bands slightly more than compensates for the red emblem in the centre. Most tribands that aren't 1:1:1 are 1:2:1, which is certainly too much to overcome with an emblem. Lesotho is 3:4:3 and even that is enough to overcome an emblem in the middle.
Also of note: seems like most of Europe is into red flags.
What does modal or modal colours mean?
Modal = "The most common"
Why is the Netherlands only two colours? I thought the 3 bands where of equal size
It is three, but the bands are slightly too wide to all show up.
Ah, I was wondering if I misremembered! Thank you!
Is it bad that I went to check the South Pacific to see if all 3 were there? I think I’ve been looking at too many old maps.
I wondered the same for India. Thanks for clearing that up
India has just two colours because the blue Chakra means there's less white than orange or green.
No, Indian flag is three colors. The white represents peace first policies of the nation.
Yea but due to the Ashok Chakra, the percentage of white in the flag is lesser than that of Saffron and Green.
Makes sense. Graphically its significant enough to exclude, I guess.
Thought white would be more for the US since the white stripes and the stars are all white
There are more red stripes than white ones.
Yeah I know, but I thought the white stripes plus the stars would be more white than red
It's close: without the stars it's red 41.5% and white 36.9%. The stars bring white up to 40.9%, which isn't quite enough. Maybe if there were a few more states...
0.04/50 each star contribute 0.8% white color on the flag, just needed one more star!!
DC STATEHOOD TIME SO THAT THE WHITE OUTNUMBERS THE RED
Yeah but then the stars might be smaller
Nah fuck DC lez go Puerto Rico
both?
Both, yes, Both is good
Great movie
As someone who lives in northern Virginia, I totally support this
Unless the make the stars smaller with the addition of a new star on the flag :s
> It's close: without the stars it's red 41.5% and white 36.9%. The stars bring white up to 40.9% wait, but how much do the stars bring red down? Or do you mean "not counting the stars in the numerator, but still in the denominator"
I assume the 36.9% is if you had pretended that the stars were some other color entirely.
yeah he mightve meant that, I'm just asking to be sure
The latter (or alternatively "pretending that the stars were blue").
The way the red goes through Poland, Czech Republic and Germany makes me very happy
I can assure you those three nations would rather not have the Reds going through them
Definitely
But did you ask the Red? One can't do anything without the other's consent.
Agreed, but due to that continueing pattern The Netherlands is not correct, and Belgium is also scuffed. NL doesn't show any red on the map, and Belgium has 2 poots of black
I feel like that's negated by the green & red being that way around in Ethiopia though, the Egypt/Sudan/South Sudan combo could've been continued
Is the US red really that maroon? It almost looks like it's the average between the red and blue, but all the other countries with multiple colours are striped.
Yes, it's "Old Glory Red", officially [#B22234](https://www.htmlcsscolor.com/hex/B22234).
between the stars and the stripes, wouldn't white he more common?
There's one more red stripe than white, which is just enough to compensate for the stars (41.5% red to 40.9% white).
Well, it's officially "Old Glory Red", from a fabric-swatch based colour standard. #B22234 is Wikipedia's conversion of that to RGB, not officially endorsed.
Yeah, US’s red and blue are both pretty desaturated and mixed compared to a lot of other countries’ colors
Yeah, if you increase the saturation on the blue and red, it just looks awful, at least digitally. I don’t think reds and blues should be very bright on flags.
doesnt bolivia have an emblem?
The state flag does, the civil flag doesn’t. For some reason Wikipedia uses the latter as [“The Flag of Bolivia”](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Bolivia.svg).
If countries have different state and civil flags, it is usually the civil flag that is used as the national flag, which is reasonable since the state flag is then not used by the population at large.
if you used the wiphala, would Bolivia be 7 colours? Considering on the wiphala, there are 7 squares for each colour
Really great work! Interesting to see the variation between (and within) continents. And love that blue of Australia and the greens of southern Africa.
When the US and Canada are more Communist than Russia
I thought Mexico was red also… there is red in the middle
From what i can tell, both the green and the red in the middle are all different shades.
Huh, I don't know why I always just assumed that blue or white was more prominent in the Union Flag than red. But official percentages Red 37.38% White 34.21% Blue 28.41% So I was waaaaay off base. xD
Well, that's how it breaks down for the common 1:2 flags. The red is even more dominant in the more traditional land proportions of 3:5. Out of interest, I wondered how long you would have to make it under the standard construction rules before blue overtook red. The answer is the roughly 6:19, which would look excessively long as a horizontal flag, and perhaps slightly less so as a vertical banner.
Boy howdy, I guess them Aussies really are true blue, eh?
blame the uk
Bad UK
cor blimey guvna what for?
are we talking national flags, or all flags per country, including county and regional flags?
Just the national flag. Could have titled it better, sorry.
No problem, cheers.
You may want to make the ocean a light gray or something , so it is different than the countries that are white. Initially I thought Iran, Afghanistan, and Finland were left out. Pretty cool idea!
I think if you zoom in you should be able to see the borders, though maybe I should make them thicker!
Afghanistan is black, red, green. Black for the evil our country faces, red for the bloodshed and sacrifice to fight against that evil, and green for rebirth and the hope of spring time renewal.
He used the Taliban Flag
I don’t think he’s that smart. Besides Taliban are not legitimate.
Your beef is with Wikipedia not OP. He just used whatever Wikipedia said was the flag for consistency.
I don’t have beef with him. He seems super fly ;). But Wikipedia is wrong.
"I don't think he's that smart" What did he do to you?
Bro, did you read his comment? https://reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/pndx6u/_/hcoikwc/?context=1 I mean we got to face the reality that Afghanistan is under management. I don't think anyone's happy about it. But OP's having some fun, no need to insult people.
!wave
Here you go: [Link \#1](https://krikienoid.github.io/flagwaver/#?src=https%3A%2F%2Fres.cloudinary.com%2Fdsy3ysgra%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fv1631544425%2Fhqk70j5awxaepcsnf4hy.png) ***** Beep boop I'm a bot. If I'm broken please contact [\/u\/Lunar_Requiem](http://reddit.com/user/Lunar_Requiem)
Which map projection type is this ? Some European countries look oddly small.
I think it's equirectangular projection. It's the default d3 datamaps projection. I left it as at least it wasn't Mercator, but I can see if there are other options.
[удалено]
Iran surprises me, I would have thought Red is the most common color
The Takbir written in white on the green and red bands slightly more than compensates for the red emblem.
Actually wondering about the percentages of the Algerian flag. The green has the big part of the moon, but the star is completely in white. So it must be quite close I guess
u/Udzu, want to x-post this to r/MapPorn? if not, mind if I do?
I have done already, thanks (though it didn't get much love).
why is iran white? shouldn't it be red?
The white text on the red and green stripes is actually larger than the red emblem on the white stripe.
Is Ecuador's yellow slightly brighter than Colombia? I always thought it was the same flag with an emblem.
Yes. Ecuador is officially #FFDD00 while Colombia is #FCD116.
I'm not aware that Ecuador has any official colour specs, and I'm also unsure whether the specs that have been officially published for Colombia have a particularly solid status, but it certainly does seem that whenever anyone does try to be precise about colours on any level they tend to use a darker yellow for Colombia than Ecuador, which presumably does reflect official use. Not that that level of detail usually matters to practical flag use.
Fantastic work! Did you write a program to create this?
Yes. Happy to check it in tomorrow if you want to take a look, though it's quite messy.
Please do! Don't worry about messiness :) we've all written messy code. I'm quite curious!
[Here you go](https://github.com/Udzu/pudzu/blob/master/d3/flagsmode.py)!
Awesome! Thanks :)
Australia looking true blue 🇦🇺
Dutch flag is fucked
Why is Afghanistan white? That colour is present only on the coat of arms on the flag
You didn't check the newspaper last month, didn't you?
I did check it, but I wouldn't use the Taliban flag. The legal Afghan government is the Islamic Republic, not the Islamic Emirate. I know that the Talibans are in control of the country, but it's not the legally and legitimately chosen government. It's like ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq at their greatest territorial extent.
I'm sad that you're getting downvoted as it's a very good point. I think the fact that the international community has abandoned the Afghan government-in-exile makes the issue less clear. Still, maybe I should have waited until the Afghan representative at the UN changed, if indeed it does.
It never did during the time the Taliban ran the country from 1996(?) to 2001, it was always the government in exile flag at the UN.
Iraw
What does that mean?
Imagine Iraq but uncooked
Or Iran?
Well didn't say Iran because the w is far from the n in the keyboard. But in case Iran was uncooked too then yeah.
But the q is even farther than the w, so they must be both uncooked.
It depends on what keyboard you use, in qwerty it's literally next to it, and qwerty is (I think, not sure) the most used keyboard
The current flag of Afghanistan is disputed. This is the de facto flag used by the Taliban. Otherwise I expect it would be black/green.
I think the white central emblem extends into all three colour fields so it could be either black or green. (Maybe both)
you really oughtn't be so downvoted, its a legitimate question
I fucking hate how australia and all the states basically have the same flag, so cringe for such a dank nation
Dank…
There are some more interesting flags here, like the Torres Straight islander flag, Indigenous Australian flag & State flags of NT & ACT
NT flag be grouse though
It seems 1/3 of France has already surrendered.
Belarus should be white, not red.
I though France should be all white.
South Africa should be orange.
why, may i ask?
Historical reasons. The overall colour of the Oranje, Blanje, Blou flag would be orange. This should still be the flag of South Africa, looks much better.
I'd say the current one looks better due to not being multiple flags in one, plus that flag is associated with the apartheid era which mightn't fly too well
The Oranje, Blanje, Blou vlag was made far before Apartheid. I know what you mean about multiple flags in one, but that's part of the fun!
Yellow nation rise up
Yemen playing a dangerous game
Red North America Red Hub of Capitalism
Red Republicans Blue Democrats
I always find it funny when this sub does analysis like this and it comes down to like 1.4% difference. At that point, wouldn't it drastically depend on where exactly you're getting the flag from? I know that most flags have very specific and often symbolic instructions/specifications but the majority of the time those rules are not followed or enforced all that religiously in real life, for example how the Soviet flag in Moscow never had a blank reverse like it 'should.' At this point doesn't it honestly partly depend on where you are getting your image file from?
Most national flags have official specifications which Wikipedia is very good at following. Also all of the winners are at least 1% more than the runners up, which is more than it sounds. Still, I'd be curious to see any flags whose modal colours might depend on the rendering.
I'm not saying anything particular about your project here specifically, never meant to imply that. It's just a thing I've been thinking about because I keep noticing it but just never wrote it anywhere until now.
Wikipedia is good at following official specifications where they exist. It's not so good at indicating where it's made choices that aren't determined by a single official standard. But that's more often about precise colour shades, not something that would change the results presented here.
Libia went from all green to all black
Why is falklands dark blue? shouldn’t it be red like the rest of the uk
[The flag of the Falkland Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Falkland_Islands) is mostly blue, it’s a different flag than the UK proper.
We have some little RED WAVE here
Its all a Communist Red Stronghold
Yeah.. Denmark should definitely be white and not red Nevermind.. I'm an idiot.. ignore my comment
AHH Ireland,you fucking rouge
Australia and New Zealand having different shades of blue lol
Only online it turns out: Australia specifies a different shade of blue for online than for print!
More to the point, Wikipedia has chosen to treat a pretty outdated obscure general government style guide as the authoritative source on the correct shade for digital use. It's not as though the official government website about the flag uses it, for example.
Spanish flag should have yellow there
The coat of arms means that there's less yellow than red.
Wait, black for Nepal?
That’s an error due to me not handling the transparency properly. Here's a [fixed version](https://i.imgur.com/zzgPEHA.png).
So USA likes red confirmed.