Royal blue
- HEX
- #4169E1
- RGB
- 65 105 225
- HSL
- 225° 73% 57%
- CMYK
- 71 53 0 12
Royal blue or Navy?
A bright, deep blue, much lighter and more vivid than navy.
History
A popular story says millers in Rode, Somerset, won a contest to dye a dress for Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, and that their winning shade became royal blue. No documents from the time back it up, so treat it as legend.
Design
On screens, royal blue is CSS royalblue, #4169E1. It is one of the named colors browsers inherited from the X Window System, a 1980s list that also gave the web names like cornflowerblue and steelblue.
Kin
- Azure: The blue field of France's royal coat of arms
- Purple: The older royal color; blue only rose to royalty in medieval Europe
- Cornflower: Another X11 color name the web adopted wholesale
Sources
- Georgian Era blog, 'Fashionable blues of the 18th century' (the Rode legend)
- W3C, CSS Color Module Level 4, named colors
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.