Brazil main field

Why this color matters

Brazil's flag asks the eye to chase a yellow diamond, a blue sky, a white banner and a spray of stars. The colour occupying most of the cloth can become the least examined. The target is that surrounding green field alone — not the darker green lettering on the motto band, and not a generic “rainforest green” supplied by memory.

Green before the rainforest story

The green field and yellow diamond predate the republic. They were already central to the imperial flag adopted after independence in 1822: green was associated with Pedro I's House of Braganza, and yellow with Empress Maria Leopoldina's Habsburg dynasty. Popular retellings later attached the colours to forests and mineral wealth, but that nature-and-gold reading is not their original dynastic history. The republic kept the field and diamond while replacing the imperial arms.

The national flag consists of a green rectangle bearing a yellow rhombus, with a blue celestial sphere at its centre.

Brazilian Law No. 5,700 of 1 September 1971

A republic written across the sky

The new flag was adopted by Decree No. 4 on 19 November 1889, four days after the republic was proclaimed. Its Ordem e Progresso — Order and Progress — condenses Auguste Comte's Positivist maxim. The stars map the sky over Rio de Janeiro at 8:30 a.m. on 15 November 1889 as if viewed from outside the celestial sphere. Today 27 stars stand for the 26 states and the Federal District; the law allows the pattern to change as the federation changes.

The law never says #229E45

Law No. 5,700 names the green field and gives a construction sheet: a 14-by-20 module rectangle, a precisely placed yellow rhombus, a blue circle, band, letters and stars. It does not prescribe a Pantone, RGB or hexadecimal green. #229E45 is Toon Tone's digital scoring target, taken directly from the pinned flag asset used for this card — a reproducible screen value, not a statutory dye formula.

The exact field green

The target is RGB 34/158/69, or HSB(137°, 78%, 62%). Pure green sits at 120°; 137° moves 17 degrees toward cyan, so the field is cool and faintly blue-leaning rather than grassy yellow-green. Its 78% saturation leaves some softness, and 62% brightness keeps it in the middle range. Mexico's green is far darker and bluer; Italy's and Nigeria's are darker and more saturated. Brazil is the brighter, gentler green of the four.