Official flags

What official flags are for

A national flag at a town hall, a European flag beside the entrance of an administrative centre, a row of flags at a hotel or a company headquarters: this is the most formal kind of visual communication there is. Nobody gives it much thought until something is wrong — a faded flag, the wrong proportions, or a flag missing at a ceremony.

If you are looking for a national flag, a country flag, a European flag, a protocol flag, a municipal flag or a provincial flag, this is the family you need.

For a mast or on a pole

A flag for a flagpole has a reinforced heading along the hoist side with eyelets or clips, so it can be attached to the halyard and raised. It is built to fly and to take whatever the weather does.

A flag on a pole sits in a wall bracket or a floor base and hangs rather than flies. Indoors that is the usual version, often with a heavier fabric and a finish with fringing or cord.

It is the same flag, but not the same product. Put a flying flag in a wall bracket and you are looking at a piece of fabric that does not hang the way it should.

Fabric and printing

Outdoors we work with woven polyester that lets light through, so the colour reads from both sides with a mirror image on the back. Indoor flags use a heavier, denser fabric that falls in folds instead of fluttering.

National flags add a requirement that ordinary advertising banners never face: the colours and the proportions are fixed. The Belgian tricolour has a prescribed ratio between height and width, and the bands must be equal. A flag that deviates is noticed by exactly the audience that pays the most attention.

Indoor versions

Indoor flags come in several levels of finish. The difference lies in the fabric weight and the trim: a basic version without fringing, a classic version with cord, and a heavier ceremonial version with fringing and tassel. In a council chamber or at a formal occasion that difference is visible from the front row.

Provincial, municipal and association flags to order

Every Belgian province and almost every municipality has its own flag, and it is rarely a stock item. The same goes for associations, schools, church councils and companies with their own emblem.

For an advertising banner the artwork is usually available digitally and ready to print. For a coat of arms it almost never is. What reaches us is generally a scan from an old bylaw, an image from a letterhead, or a file too small to stay sharp at flag size.

That means drawing work up front: the arms are redrawn as a vector file, after which they stay sharp at any size — on a thirty-centimetre table flag as well as on a three-metre flag for a mast. That happens once. Everything you order afterwards starts from that same file, and we keep it for you so that a repeat order in three years' time is right straight away.

Watch the proportions and the colours as well. A municipal flag has a prescribed aspect ratio, and the colours of a coat of arms are set by heraldry. A flag that deviates is noticed by exactly the audience that pays the most attention: your own residents and the protocol officers. We fix those values in the file and show them on the proof before anything is printed.

For a complete set of flagpoles

Many authorities look after dozens of poles, spread across the town hall, schools, sports sites and cemeteries. Those flags do not wear out all at once, but they do all wear out.

Handle them one at a time and you pay for the preparation every time and never have a uniform look. Plan it as a single round and you order once and have years of peace. We help map out such a round: which poles, which sizes, which flags per location.

How long a flag lasts

Outdoors a flag is a wearing part. Wind frays the free edge first, and UV gradually takes the colour out — red and blue fade faster than the rest. A flag that flies permanently lasts considerably less long than one raised only for occasions.

If you manage a series of poles, it is better to plan a fixed replacement round than to wait until someone notices it all looks scruffy. It is also the cheapest way: one order for every pole instead of one flag at a time.

Why the price varies

Size and fabric weight form the basis. Then there is the finish — eyelets and clips for a mast, fringing and cord for indoors — and whether it is a stock flag or a bespoke flag with your own arms or logo. Bespoke work adds drawing time when the artwork exists only in low resolution. And finally the quantity, because covering a whole series of poles in one go means paying for the preparation once.

What we do

We supply stock flags, make flags to order and, if you want, handle the replacement round for your entire set of flagpoles. Tell us which flags you need, whether they go on a mast or on a pole and what sizes the poles are, and we will put the whole thing together.