Blue and white, the two colors in the Scottish flag, stand for perseverance, loyalty, truth, justice and vigilance and honesty and peace, respectively. Also, specially in case of state flags, the meaning associated with the colors are generally endorsed by an official charter.

These variations in shade eventually led to calls to standardise the colour of Scotland's national flag, and in 2003 a committee of the Scottish Parliament met to examine a petition that the Scottish Executive adopt the Pantone 300 colour as a standard (this blue is of a lighter shade than the Pantone 280 of the Union Flag).