The official St. Louis Cardinals colors are cardinal red, navy, yellow and white. The primary color is cardinal red (#C41E3A), paired with navy (#0C2340), yellow (#FEDB00) and white (#FFFFFF). These four appear across the birds on the bat logo, the uniforms and every piece of licensed merchandise the club sells.
St. Louis Cardinals Color Codes
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Small warning before you paste these into a brand deck: you will find a few sites listing the navy as #22205F and the yellow as PMS 108 C. Those come from older or unofficial sheets. The values in the table above are the ones that match the current MLB style guide and what Nike actually stitches.
Every Color in the Cardinals Palette, Broken Down
Cardinal Red (#C41E3A)
This is the anchor. Cardinal red fills the two birds in the logo, the script wordmark, the cap crown on the City Connect set and roughly every hat in the Busch Stadium bleachers on a Friday night.
It sits at HSL 350, 73%, 44%, so it leans slightly cool and a little pink compared to the fire-engine red most people picture. Worth knowing if you are matching print stock. The shade traces back to 1899, when a sportswriter overheard a woman describe the new red trim on the uniforms as a lovely shade of cardinal. The nickname stuck, the club adopted it in 1900, and the color never left.
Navy (#0C2340)
Navy is the quiet workhorse. It outlines the birds, sits inside the bat, appears in the cap logo trim and holds the script lettering together so the red does not bleed into white fabric.
At 12, 35, 64 in RGB it is genuinely dark, closer to midnight than to a standard navy blue you would grab from a default swatch library. Designers keep making the same mistake here: they reach for #000080 and the whole logo looks cheap. Use the real value.
Yellow (#FEDB00)
The bat. That is basically it, plus the beaks and the legs of the two birds.
Yellow is an accent, never a field color, and it is doing something specific: it separates the two red birds so they do not merge into one shape at small sizes. Try rendering the logo in grayscale and you will see why it works. Pure PMS 107 C with zero magenta, so it reads bright rather than golden. It is not a gold tone, despite what half the fan-made merch on Etsy assumes.
White (#FFFFFF)
Home jersey base, cap lettering trim, negative space inside the logo. Nothing exotic. But the club treats white as an actual palette member rather than an afterthought, and the style guide lists it as such.
Cardinals Uniform Colors
Home: white with red script and the birds on the bat, navy outlining, navy cap with the red interlocking STL.
Road: gray with red “St. Louis” script across the chest, same navy trim.
Alternates: a cream jersey for Saturday home games and a powder blue jersey for Saturday road games, the second one a straight callback to the 1976 through 1984 road sets.
City Connect: red jersey, white pants, red cap with STL in white and navy. Debuted May 25, 2024 against the Cubs. It was the first red jersey in regular season franchise history, which surprises people given how much red the fanbase wears.
History and Rebranding
The franchise dates to 1882 as the St. Louis Brown Stockings. Red trim arrived at the end of the 1890s, and the Cardinals name followed in 1900.
The single most important date is April 1922, when the birds on the bat appeared on a jersey for the first time. Branch Rickey had seen red cardinal decorations on white tablecloths at a church event in Ferguson in 1921 and pushed the idea. Over a century later the logo is essentially unchanged in concept.
The palette has barely moved since. The cap has flipped between navy and red crowns across the decades, the powder blue road period ran through the late 70s and early 80s, and the 2024 City Connect brought back pinstripes for the first time since 1929. That is a remarkably short list of changes for 140-plus years, and it is a big part of why the brand reads as stable.
How to Use the Cardinals Colors
Screen work: use the HEX or RGB values. Print: use CMYK, or the Pantone codes if you have spot color budget. Do not convert #C41E3A to CMYK yourself and expect a match. The math and the ink do not agree, and cardinal red is one of the shades where the drift is obvious.
Copy-ready variables:
:root {
--cardinals-red: #C41E3A;
--cardinals-navy: #0C2340;
--cardinals-yellow: #FEDB00;
--cardinals-white: #FFFFFF;
}A practical note on pairing: red on navy at small text sizes fails contrast checks badly. Put white between them, exactly like the jersey does. The logo solved this problem a hundred years ago and most people ignore the solution.
Related Resources
- Full league reference: baseball team color codes for all 30 clubs.
- Division rivals: Chicago Cubs colors, Cincinnati Reds colors, Milwaukee Brewers colors and Pittsburgh Pirates colors.
- Other red-forward clubs worth comparing: Boston Red Sox colors and Philadelphia Phillies colors.
- Color theory: red color palettes and blue color palettes if you are building around this scheme.
FAQ on The St. Louis Cardinals Colors
What are the St. Louis Cardinals colors?
The official St. Louis Cardinals colors are cardinal red, navy, yellow and white. Cardinal red (#C41E3A) leads the palette. Navy handles outlines and cap logos, yellow appears only on the bat and the birds’ beaks.
What are the St. Louis Cardinals color codes in HEX and RGB?
Cardinal red is #C41E3A, RGB 196, 30, 58. Navy is #0C2340, RGB 12, 35, 64. Yellow is #FEDB00, RGB 254, 219, 0. White is #FFFFFF, RGB 255, 255, 255.
What is the St. Louis Cardinals Pantone color?
Three Pantone values cover the team: PMS 200 C for cardinal red, PMS 289 C for navy and PMS 107 C for yellow. Use these for jerseys, signage and anything printed rather than converting the HEX yourself.
What is the primary color of the Cardinals?
Cardinal red. It fills both birds in the birds on the bat logo, the chest script, the City Connect jersey and most merchandise. Navy is secondary and mainly structural, keeping the red from bleeding into white fabric.
When did the Cardinals adopt their current colors?
Red trim arrived around 1899, and the club took the Cardinals name in 1900. The birds on the bat mark, which locked in the red, navy and yellow combination, first appeared on a jersey in April 1922.
Why is the Cardinals bat yellow?
The yellow bat separates the two red birds so the logo stays readable at small sizes. It also matches their beaks and legs. Purely an accent color, never used as a jersey base.
Are the Cardinals colors the same as the Cincinnati Reds or Boston Red Sox?
No. Cardinal red (#C41E3A) is cooler and slightly pinker than the Reds’ brighter #C6011F or the Red Sox’s #BD3039. The navy and yellow accents make the Cardinals palette distinct from either rival.
What color is the Cardinals home uniform?
White base, red script and birds, navy outlining, navy cap with a red interlocking STL. A cream jersey runs on Saturday home games. Road grays carry the same red script reading “St. Louis.”
Do the Cardinals wear a red jersey?
Yes, but only since May 25, 2024. The Nike City Connect set gave the franchise its first regular-season red jersey in 142 years, paired with white pants and a red STL cap.
What is the CMYK for Cardinals red?
0, 100, 65, 15. Navy runs 100, 60, 0, 56 and yellow sits at 0, 0, 100, 0. Printing directly from converted HEX values usually shifts the red, so start from these numbers.
Conclusion
The St. Louis Cardinals colors come down to four values you can copy straight into a file: #C41E3A, #0C2340, #FEDB00 and #FFFFFF, backed by PMS 200 C, 289 C and 107 C for print.
Grab the CMYK numbers before you send anything to a printer. That red drifts.
And if you are pulling the whole color palette into a fan project or a mockup, keep white between the red and the navy. Busch Stadium has been proving that trick works since 1922.
Renowned for his expertise in logo design and visual branding, Bogdan has developed a multitude of logos for various clients.
His skills extend to creating posters, vector illustrations, business cards, and brochures. Additionally, Bogdan's UI kits were featured on marketplaces like Visual Hierarchy and UI8.
He also wrote in the past years on sites like Design Your Way, WebDesignerDepot, WPDean, Designmodo, Speckyboy, Slider Revolution, and more.
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Bogdan Sandu is a seasoned designer who has been designing websites since 2008. Renowned for his expertise in logo design and visual branding, Bogdan has developed a multitude of logos for various clients. His skills extend to creating posters, vector illustrations, business cards, and brochures. Additionally, Bogdan's UI kits were featured on marketplaces like Visual Hierarchy and UI8. He also wrote in the past years on sites like Design Your Way, WebDesignerDepot, WPDean, Designmodo, Speckyboy, Slider Revolution, and more.
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