There Are No Official Hex or RGB for the Colours of Bangladesh National Flag
Here is the most accurate Hex codes for Bangladesh National Flag:
- Green:
#006651
- Red:
#DA291C
That’s correct, officially the government has never specified the colours for digital format of the red-green national flag of Bangladesh.
The only official specification for the two colours is this:
(a) The green base of the flag will be of Procion Brilliant Green H-2RS 50
parts per 1000.
(b) The red circular part will be of Procion Brilliant Orange H-2RS 60
parts per 1000.
Procion is a brand of fibre reactive dyes. They are still commonly used in tie dye and other textile crafts. Since the patent on the dyes has expired, many manufacturers around the world now make them. Procion is highly compatible with natural fibres, affordable and accessible for small-scale and industrial use and customisable for a wide range of shades. It is great that the Procion specification of the colours of the flag was specified back in the 1972, but the problem is they are still the only official specification out there.
Although Procion dyes excel at uniformly reproducing colours on fabric, they are not suited for digital use. This stems from the fundamental difference between the digital, light-based additive colour model and the physical, pigment-based world of colour. In the physical world, colours are created using pigments, paints, powders, or inks, and their behaviour is entirely different from light. For example, with pigments, the primary colours are red, blue, and yellow (RBY) in art or cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) in printing. Mixing these pigments absorbs light, and combining them all results in black, as they work by subtracting light.
Conversely, in the digital realm, where light is the source of colour, the primary colours are red, green, and blue (RGB). Mixing them all produces white, as they follow an additive model—exactly the opposite of pigments. Since digital devices work with light, not pigments, they rely on the RGB format, where the presence of all colours generates white. This fundamental difference makes translating Procion dye specifications to digital media challenging, as the two systems operate on entirely different principles. If you’re curious, exploring these concepts on the Internet further can deepen your understanding.
If you search in the Internet you will find some digital specifications of the colours of Bangladesh flag floating around. None of them are officially recognised, and none of them are 100% correct, i.e: no matter where you are copying the information from, there will be some discrepancies about the RGB and the Hex values of the red and green.
However, the Pantone equivalent of the official Procion is somewhat uniform in every source that I could come across. I could not find the history of when or who specified the Pantone equivalents for the Procion red green, but everywhere it is specified as
Pantone 342 C for green, and 485 for the red. …
