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If you want your country to seem wealthy, then you could try putting more white in your national flag but avoid green, according to New Zealand research.
A University of Canterbury study of the popularity of all the color combinations of flags for 194 sovereign countries found the more white in the flag, the higher the per capita GDP, while green was associated with poverty.
The New Zealand flag used the most common combination of three colors, dark blue, red and white, which featured in more than 55 percent of all three-colored flags, Associate Professor Christoph Bartneck said in a statement Monday.
"We calculated 12 colors used the most in all the national flags. The colors were unevenly distributed and red, white, green and dark blue together made up for almost 75 percent of the surface in all flags," said Bartneck.
"Despite the fact that there is absolutely no causal relationship between the colors used in a flag and the social economic indicators of a country, the color green in flags can be associated indirectly with poverty," he said.
"Using a certain color will not make a country richer or poorer, and neither do countries choose their colors because of their wealth. Still, the wealth in this world is not evenly distributed, and neither are the colors of flags."
Researchers also calculated the popularity for all the color combinations in the flags and found that for a new country, the combination of dark blue and red would be the best choice.
The analysis would help to inform designers in general as well as flag designers, he said.
"In an economy that overflows with products it becomes increasingly difficult to create a color scheme that is popular and unique," Bartneck said.
