Navy Blue Color Meaning | Connotations & Palettes

Navy blue is a rich, dark shade of blue often used in design and fashion to convey calm confidence and timeless style. This article explores the meaning of navy blue, its historical background, common color pairings, and practical details like color codes.

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What does navy blue symbolize?

Navy blue is a dark shade of blue strongly associated with authority, professionalism, and reliability in Western cultures. Because of these qualities, it’s a popular choice for brands and organizations that want to project trust, credibility, and stability. In fashion, navy blue can express timeless sophistication and understated elegance.

Its long history in naval and military uniforms has also linked navy blue with discipline, structure, and order. Compared to brighter blues, it comes across as more serious and measured.

Color conversion

Facts about navy blue

Navy blue gets its name from its use in the uniforms of the British Royal Navy. The color was first adopted for officers’ uniforms and later became the standard choice for regular sailors as well.

Historically, navy blue fabrics were often dyed using indigo, a natural dye made from the leaves of plants grown in tropical and subtropical regions. Indigo produced a deep color that held up well in sunlight and didn’t easily show dirt or wear.

Modern navy blue uniforms worn in the US Navy and the Canadian Navy are extremely dark and can appear to be black.

Navy blue is also common in sports uniforms. For example, the home jerseys of the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans football teams both feature navy blue as their main color.

Navy blue color combination

In fashion and interior design, navy blue is considered an easy-to-pair “neutral” that works well with a wide range of colors. Classic navy-blue pairings include white, maroon, chestnut brown, and light gray.

Navy blue color palettes based on color wheel theory often feature olives and mustards, medium cyan blues and violets, maroons and emerald greens, as well as purples.

Color variations

Navy blue color code

The color code for the CSS color name Navy is #000080.

In its digital communications, the United States Navy uses the hex code #022a3a for the color navy blue.

Dark navy blue

A dark navy blue color code is #191970, which is the code for the CSS color name MidnightBlue.

Navy blue vs royal blue

Navy blue generally refers to a darker shade of blue than royal blue, and this difference is clearly reflected in the CSS color names navy (#000080) and royalblue (#4169E1).

In the past, however, royal blue often described a much darker shade that looks very similar to navy blue. To avoid confusion, this darker shade is now sometimes called “traditional royal blue” and is often represented by the hex code #002366.