The American Color

A thought occurs: if one were to mix the colors of the United States flag, in the proportions they appear on the flag, what would be the one resultant color to represent America?

First let's get our colors. This site explains:

The exact shades of blue and red are numbers 80075 and 80180 in the Standard Color Card of America published by the Color Association of the United States. In the Pantone system the colors are: Blue PMS 282 and Red PMS 193. The RGB numbers are: #002868 (blue) and #BF0A30 (red).

But then other sites disagree. You'd think this would be a standard thing which would be easy to find. Who is authoritative? I'm not sure, but I'm going to go with the website of the US Consulates in the United Kingdom which states that the blue is "Old Glory Blue" (HEX: #002147) and "Old Glory Red" (HEX: #BB133E).

Note: The standards of the Color Association of the United States mean nothing to me, the Pantone system is not helpful, but with the Hex numbers we have something we can use later.

Now for the ratios. 

I asked ChatGPT what the ratios were for the colors of the American flag and it said 60% white, 40% red, 3.9% blue. Aside from the fact that that doesn't add to 100%, 3.9% blue sounds impossible. Thanks, ChatGPT.

So, more searching... the best source I could find is a random forum post by some random dude calling himself "Dr. No." Dr. No says:

The current USA flag is 41.5% red and as a bonus I'll throw in the fact that the other color percentages are 40.9% white and 17.6% blue.

 I'm not one to take the word of a random weirdo on the internet, but believe it or not, I've looked for alternatives and this is somehow the best source I could find. So we have the ratios... I guess.

Now to mix the exact colors in the exact correct proportion, we need an online color mixer that allows for Hex value inputs and percentages. I found dopelycolors, which doesn't allow for tenths of a percent, so I'll round. All of the ratios round up - the red has the lowest decimal so the red gets rounded down.

Taking all of this into account, the end result color of America is:

Turkish Rose (HEX: #B5768F)

What are the chances? What are the chances that The Great American Color would just happen to have another country in its name?

So there you have it. I knew it was going to be a form of purple but I was hoping for a richer purple. But the numbers are the numbers. Wear Turkish Rose and you can be patriotic in a way that communicates nothing and only confuses people if you explain it.