What are the colors of France's flag from hoist to fly?

France’s flag is blue, white and red from hoist to fly. The hoist is the side attached to the flagpole, while the fly is the free outer edge.

The French tricolour has three vertical bands of equal width in its standard civil design. Its colours developed during the French Revolution: blue and red were associated with Paris, while white had long been linked with the French monarchy and the nation.

The first revolutionary tricolour design, approved in 1790, placed the colours in the opposite order, with red nearest the hoist. The modern blue-white-red order was adopted on 15 February 1794. The flag was briefly replaced by a white royal flag during the Bourbon Restoration, then restored after the July Revolution of 1830.

A common mix-up is confusing the order with other red-white-blue flags, or reading the fly-to-hoist direction instead. France’s constitutional description is explicitly “blue, white, red.”