Heraldry Tincture Reference
Look up any of the seven core heraldic tinctures, or match a hex color to the nearest one, with its historic Petra Sancta hatching pattern and traditional meaning.
Gules
Even vertical lines top to bottom.
Metals, colours, and hatching
Heraldry sorts its palette into two metals (Or and Argent) and five colours (Gules, Azure, Vert, Purpure, and Sable). The rule of tincture says a charge of one metal should sit on a field of colour, and vice versa, so that the design stays legible even from a distance or worn on faded cloth.
Long before colour printing, the Petra Sancta system let engravers show which tincture was meant using only black lines and dots — a convention still used today on seals, bookplates, and academic coats of arms rendered in black and white.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a heraldic tincture?
Tincture is the heraldic term for the standardized set of colors and metals used on a coat of arms. There are two metals — Or (gold) and Argent (silver) — and five principal colours — Gules (red), Azure (blue), Vert (green), Purpure (purple), and Sable (black). Heraldic design also follows a long-standing convention against placing metal on metal or colour on colour, to keep charges legible at a distance.
What is the Petra Sancta hatching system?
It's a scheme for showing tinctures in black-and-white engraving, popularised by the Jesuit heraldist Silvestro Petra Sancta in 1638: vertical lines for Gules, horizontal lines for Azure, dots for Or, a blank field for Argent, and two opposite diagonals for Vert and Purpure. It let printers reproduce full-colour coats of arms accurately in monochrome books for centuries before color printing was practical.
Is there an official hex code for a heraldic tincture?
No — heraldry has never fixed exact shades, only the tincture names themselves; artists have always had latitude in rendering them. The hex values here are a common flat-color digital convention for display purposes, not a claimed official standard.
What does the "nearest tincture" match do?
Enter any hex color and it reports which of the seven core tinctures is closest to it by straight-line RGB distance — a quick way to translate a custom brand or design color into its nearest heraldic equivalent.
Educational and historical reference only. Hex values are a common digital approximation, not an official heraldic standard.