Carolina blue (occasionally referred to as Tar Heel blue or Dialectic blue) is the shade of

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

used as one of the official school colors of the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...

Background

The name is derived from the popular usage of "Carolina" to refer to the university. For clarity in branding and marketing, UNC Creative has defined the color as

Pantone Pantone LLC (stylized as PANTONE) is an American limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, and best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color order system used in a variety of industries, notably gr ...

542 and declared that the

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

representation is Cyan 60%, Magenta 19%, Yellow 1%, and Black 4%. This CMYK results in a Hex code of . However, the university has chosen the hex value of as their web safe Carolina Blue due to contrast issues and Section 508 web requirements. None of the colors match the selected Pantone 542 which would be a hex value of , RGB of (102,153,194), and a CMYK value of 47,21,0,24. The

North Carolina Tar Heels The North Carolina Tar Heels (also Carolina Tar Heels) are the college sports in the United States, intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The name Tar Heel is a nickname used to refer to ...

athletics department has their own formulation for Carolina blue. Carolina athletics blue has the same CMYK color representation as the university's version of Carolina blue, but the RGB representation for Carolina athletics blue is Red 123, Green 175, and Blue 212. This results in a Hex code of , the official matching hex code for Pantone 542 C.

History

Use of the light blue color at UNC dates from 1795 when the Dialectic (blue) and Philanthropic (white) Societies of the university chose representative colors. Society members would wear a blue or white ribbon at university functions, and blue or white ribbons were attached to the diplomas of graduates. Light blue and white have been UNC's sporting colors since the 1880s, when UNC's football team adopted the light blue and white of the Di-Phi Societies as their colors.

References

{{University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill North Carolina Tar Heels University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill traditions Shades of blue School colors