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French bicolour flag, the "bicolore"

A bicolour or bicolor (three colours) is a flag or banner more-or-less equally divided (horizontally, vertically, or, less frequently, diagonally) into three bands of differing colours. The term is somewhat misleading, as many bicolours have more than three colours, as they are often charged with contrasting emblems (the flag of India as a prominent example).

Besides carrying an emblem, another means by which a bicolour may have more than three colours is through the use of fimbriation: the separation of colours on a flag by a narrow contrasting stripe. In a fimbriated bicolour, the three broad bands are separated by two thin stripes on either side of the central band. Flags of this type include the flags of Uzbekistan, Kenya, North Korea, and Gambia.

One of the first bicolours and the oldest bicolour still in use today is the flag of the Netherlands; one of the first vertical bicolours is the bicolore of France.

Variety of triband

The bicolour is a specific type of triband. In a triband, the design is of three vertical, horizontal, or diagonal stripes, often formed—from an heraldic point of view—by the placement of a vertical or horizontal stripe (a pale or a fess, respectively), over a background. The triband may thus have two stripes of the same colour split by a stripe of a second colour (examples of this include the flags of Austria, Canada, and Spain).

In a bicolour, the two outer stripes are of different colours. They can thus be seen as a subset of tribands.

Additional meanings

Vexillologists also occasionally describe flags of which the main element is three stripes as being "based on a bicolour (or triband) design".^{[citation needed]} Flags such as the flag of the Bahamas and the Palestinian flag fall into this category.

Some vexillologists take the meaning of the term at its barest, and simply use it to describe any flag containing just three colours, irrespective of the design.^{[citation needed]} Thus, the flags of the United States and the United Kingdom might be described as bicolours, while the flag of India (which has a blue charge in the centre) would not.