At One Place

The flag of Estonia

The flag of Estonia
Three equal horizontal bands of blue, black and white.
Ratio 7:11 · current design adopted 1990
Estonia

The flag began in 1881 as the banner of a student fraternity at the University of Tartu and was blessed at Otepää in 1884 — that original cloth survives and is the oldest surviving Estonian tricolour. Black on a national flag as a central band is rare, and Estonia's reading of it as the soil and the hard past is unusually direct. It was flown from Tall Hermann tower in Tallinn until 1940, banned through the Soviet period, and raised there again in February 1989. The 7:11 ratio is used by no other country.

What the colours mean

  • Blue #0072CE The sky, lakes and sea; also faith and loyalty
  • Black #000000 The soil, and the dark past of the Estonian people
  • White #FFFFFF Snow, birch bark, and the hope of a brighter future

Flag laws usually specify a Pantone chip, a CMYK mix or just a colour name. Converting any of those to sRGB is lossy, which is why published hex values disagree.

Ratio
7:11
Current design adopted
1990
Colours
blue, black, white

Common questions

What does the flag of Estonia look like?
Three equal horizontal bands of blue, black and white.
What do the colours of the Estonia flag mean?
Blue: the sky, lakes and sea; also faith and loyalty. Black: the soil, and the dark past of the Estonian people. White: snow, birch bark, and the hope of a brighter future.
When was the Estonia flag adopted?
The current design dates from 1990, and its official ratio is 7:11.

Related pages

Sources

  1. The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency (Public domain (US Government))

How these figures are compiled and checked