Flag of Washington
Washington’s flag is dark green with the state seal in the centre: a portrait of George Washington inside a gold ring reading THE SEAL OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON 1889. The flag law gives the green and the seal no meaning beyond naming them.
How to read it
The flag is set by Revised Code of Washington 1.20.010, first enacted in 1923 and amended in 1925, 1967 and 2011: dark green silk or bunting with a reproduction of the state seal in the centre. Fringe is optional, and if used it is gold or yellow in the shade of the seal; the law lets the dimensions vary. The Secretary of State’s rule, WAC 434-04-017, adds the details: the same seal on both sides, centred, the seal’s diameter a third of the flag’s length and the flag 1 : 1.6, with the colours named as Irish Green for the field, Oriental Blue behind the portrait, black for the portrait, lettering and rings, and Spanish Yellow for the gold. The Secretary of State says the 1923 law allowed green fringe and that the Legislature changed it to gold two years later.
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Flags before 1923
Washington had no official design until 1923, more than 30 years after statehood. The Secretary of State says that around 1900 many towns flew a military flag with a gold profile of George Washington on blue bunting, and that another design, close to today’s, had a gold seal on purple or green; a ceremonial banner of that kind hangs in the State Reception Room of the Legislative Building in Olympia. The Legislature’s symbols booklet dates the blue and gold military flag to the late 1890s.
How the seal was made
The Secretary of State says a committee brought the Olympia jeweller Charles Talcott a detailed sketch of the port of Tacoma, wheat fields, grazing sheep and Mount Rainier in 1889, and that Talcott thought it too complicated. He drew round an ink bottle and a silver dollar to make the two rings, lettered “The Seal of the State of Washington, 1889” between them, and pasted a postage stamp of George Washington in the centre. For the die, his brother George found a colour picture of Washington on a packing box of Dr. D. Jayne’s Cure for Coughs & Colds. In 1967 the Seattle designer Richard Nelms redrew it from a Gilbert Stuart portrait, and the Legislature made that the official seal.
Read next
- Next in US state flagsFlag of ConnecticutConnecticut’s flag is azure blue with the state arms: a white shield of three grapevines bearing fruit, over a white streamer with the motto “Qui Transtulit Sustinet” (“He Who Transplanted Still Sustains”). No law says what the vines stand for; CT Humanities says they likely stand for the first three English towns in Connecticut, Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield.
- The same shape in Coin gradesAG (about good)AG stands for about good: a very heavily worn coin that falls just short of good, with the rims worn into the lettering. It is a single grade on the 70-point Sheldon scale, AG 3.
More US state flags
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with circles, letters and numbers or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- RCW 1.20.010 State flag, Revised Code of Washington 1.20.010, Washington State Legislature (Office of the Code Reviser), RCW 1.20.010 and history line
- Washington State Flag (Washington Secretary of State), Washington Secretary of State, “Washington State Flag”, including WAC 434-04-017, Washington Office of the Secretary of State, History; WAC 434-04-017
- History of the State Seal (Washington Secretary of State), Washington Secretary of State, “History of the State Seal”, Washington Office of the Secretary of State, Whole page
- Symbols of Washington (2025 Legislature state symbols booklet), Washington State Legislature, "Symbols of Washington" (2025), Washington State Legislature, Flag
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 14, 2026. How we research
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