Royal blue is a deep and vivid shade of blue. It is said to have been created by a consortium of mills in Rode, Somerset, which won a competition to make a robe for Queen Charlotte, consort of King George III. In winning the prize, a business in the village invented the dye and received a certificate to sell it under that name.

Brightness

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "royal blue" as "a deep vivid blue", while the Cambridge English Dictionary defined it as "a strong, bright blue colour", and the Collins English Dictionary defines it as "a deep blue colour". US dictionaries give it as further towards purple, e.g. "a deep, vivid reddish or purplish blue" (Webster's New World College Dictionary) or "a vivid purplish blue" (Merriam-Webster). By the 1950s, many people began to think of royal blue as a brighter color, and it is this brighter color that was chosen as the web color "royal blue" (the web colors when they were formulated in 1987 were originally known as the X11 colors). The World Wide Web Consortium designated the keyword "royalblue" to be this much brighter color, rather than the traditional darker version of royal blue. Cree Inc. uses the term Royal Blue to describe light emitting diodes in the wavelength range 450–465 nanometers, slightly shorter than the regular blue range of 465–485 nanometers.

Variations

Queen blue

Queen blue is a medium tone of royal blue. The first recorded use of queen blue as a color name in English was in 1926. Before that, since 1661, this color had been called queen's blue.

Imperial blue

Imperial blue is recorded as an alternative name for the traditional royal blue color above. The name is also used for a distinct, medium blue color by Pantone.

In culture