Practice · Europe
Netherlands
How to draw the flag of Netherlands
The flag of the Netherlands is a horizontal tricolour of red, white and blue. Its official proportions are 3:2.
Colours used
- red —
#ae1c28 - white —
#ffffff - blue —
#21468b
You do not need to match these hex values exactly. Scoring allows a generous margin on shade because nobody remembers the precise navy of a flag; what it does not forgive is putting the right colour in the wrong place.
Flags it gets confused with
Netherlands belongs to the red-white-blue tricolours. Stripe order and direction are the whole difference here — get those right before worrying about shade. The others in this group are Luxembourg, Russia and France.
How to draw it well
Because the bands run horizontally, the fastest route is one rectangle per band from the top down. Each band is a third of the height, so divide the canvas before you start filling — the most common way to lose points here is drifting proportions, where the top band creeps larger and squeezes the one at the bottom.
- Fill the whole canvas with the background or the first stripe — an unpainted margin costs you points.
- Lay in the remaining bands with the rectangle tool, keeping the divisions level.
- Add the central detail last, checking its size against the height of the flag.
- Press Check my flag to see your drawing next to the real one.
Where people lose points on this flag
- Drawing a neighbour by mistake — Luxembourg, Russia and France share this layout.
- Reversing the order of the bands. Half of all lost points on tricolours come from this alone.
- Leaving a white margin around the edge of the canvas. Unpainted area is scored as wrong colour, so fill right to the borders.
Proportions
the Netherlands flies its flag at 3:2. The drawing canvas is a fixed shape and scoring compares regions rather than absolute measurements, so you do not need to reproduce the ratio exactly; what matters is that the internal divisions land in the right relative places.