A Penny for Your Thoughts: Why/How Do Passports Get Their Colour

We’ve all been to immigration control at some point in our lives, but how many of us were curious enough to know why the colour of our passport is different from those around us? Since we at Travelguru are a bunch of curious souls, we digged in a little and found that there’s much more to the colour of passports than we might think.

Turns out, passport colours are often related to the geography, policy and religion of a particular country. Though the government can choose the design and colour of the passport, it has to be derived from one of the four colours, i.e. red, green, blue or black.

Process of Selecting Colours

1. Geographical & Political Motive

Members of the European Union use burgundy or red colour passports due to a communist past, or present. The nations with red passports are Slovenia, Latvia, China, Poland, Serbia, Romania and Georgia, to count a few; whereas the blue passports of North America, South America and Oceania are symbolic of the new world.

2. Faith

Most of the Islamic states have chosen green colour for their passports because of its religious importance. It is said the green was Prophet Mohammad’s favourite colour, thus is a natural fit for Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Middle East.

3. Individual Identity

There are certain nations that opt for passport colour that reflects their individual character, eg. Swiss has bright red passports, whereas Turkey, Macedonia and Albania changed the colour to burgundy, in a hope to join EU.

4. Colour’s Prominence

There are some African nations including Zambia, Chad, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Burundi, Angola, Malawi that have black passports, because the colour plays a prominent role in their lives. New Zealand’s passport is also black due to its connection with the national colour.

While red, green, blue and black are the standard colours of passports, the shades and variations can count upto hundreds. Also, all the nations do not follow the above mentioned reasons. Sometimes the colour merely depends on the availability, for instance Canada has a white coloured temporary passport which is an exception in itself. Also, US has reportedly tried all the four colours of passports.

Featured Image Credits: pinterest.com