U.S. State Flags Ranked From Best to Worst

Poor Hawai'i and Mississippi. The Confederacy makes battle flag as a canton really makes it look as if it were a state in the CSA (even though it doesn't exist). And I know Hawai'i was a British colony, but why do they continue having the Union Jack is beyond me. It makes it look like it is a British Overseas Territory, which it isn't. I personally like the bear on the Californian flag. It depicts a bear that is extinct (forgot its name and I am to lazy to go look right now).

Also (Warning: Rant incoming), I've always found annoying that nearly every state has their seal and their name in the flag. Were the producers of these flags lazy or what? A flag is suppose to be original, not the seal and the name of your state/country/province, ect. Imagine a country having it's name and seal on its flag (though some countries do have at least the seal, but not every single country and no country has their name on their flag, as far as I remember), that would be horrible and unoriginal. Also, Texas how dare you plagiarize Chile. It has also caused confusion in which the Chilean flag was used in a ballot instead of the Texan flag. Also, funny descriptions and cool list. I mostly agree with it

As a Texan, I don't believe Texas plagiarized Chile. I actually think it's a coincidence, and I'll tell you why. The first Texan flag, back when Texas was its own country, was approved by President Sam Houston in 1836, which showed a yellow five-pointed star in the middle of the flag with a light blue background. As you can tell, it was bad. However, this star would become the famous "Lone Star." The next flag was approved by President Lamar, which pushed the star to the left and pushed back the blue background to make room for a yellow stripe and a red stripe, in many Texans' opinions (including mine) representing peace over war (but I think it might've been to represent bravery, loyalty, and purity, or maybe it was to match the U.S.'s color scheme, for it wanted to become a state). However, the colors were not exactly the same as Chile's and still recognizable until the 1933 Flag Act which established blood red and azure blue, as well as the white star, making it close to Chile's.

Hawai'i's flag looks like a mess, a shame considering it is meant to represent a beautiful state with a unique history. I have to say I personally think that the flags of Canadian provinces are better than most of these flags. Most Canadian provinces and territories at least do not include a coat of arms and the name of the province itself like most of the American ones do.

Hawaii was not a British colony

I remember reading somewhere that Maryland flag is consisered the best flag in the world by vexillology associations.

Virginia is so low because QM can't spot a sword and is a little homophobic I think.

Touch

I mean touche.

It is a sword, but I agree that is should be ranked that low. Looks like someone just killed somebody with a hoe

Have you ever killed someone with a hoe? It's not as easy as you'd think.

Do flags like Texas, which is pretty appealing visually, really deserve to be so low while Georgia blatantly uses the old Confederate flag ("The Stars and Bars," not General Lee's battle flag of which many, many people are familiar with).

Also, I laughed when I saw that each star on Alaska's flag represents one of its eight citizens.

One question, do you not like the Confederacy? It seems like you're very biased to flags containing something visual that contains the Confederacy flag and it's battle flag (or in short Mississippi and Georgia). If you want to know what every flag means you could watch this video

Every year my family would drive to Florida. When it started to smell like a toilet we knew we were in Georgia.

Oh, kalbahamut, you must have misunderstood. We're insulting the flag of Georgia, not Georgia itself. Now quit being a jerk to the South.

With all the modern re-re-re-re-re-re-reinventing of the Confederate flag, sorry, but it's still a very cool looking flag. General Lee in his tailored gray cavalry uniform with the Confederate flag just looks better in a painting against the Union blues and the Stars and Stripes. Maybe they were like the Third Reich years later: despotic fashionistas.

Georgia can just put a Coca-Cola logo on their flag. Or Home Depot. Or Delta Airlines.

@Gamer1162, I don't think anybody likes the confederacy...

I think they're cheese doodles.

Happy to see my home state at #14.

ikr

How does the Maryland flag appeal to you? To me it looks like someone was forcing a child to draw something impossible.

I don't understand how you can complain about the Union Jack on Hawaii's flag while lauding Maryland's flag. It's a beautiful flag, but IMO putting an English nobleman's symbols of heraldry on a state flag isn't cool either. You can't get much more English than the family crests of Lord Baltimore's Calvert and Crossland families, coats of arms which were granted to them by an English king.

The problem is that the Union Jack is a globally accepted symbol of a British territory. It's confusing for people seeing the flag for the first time. No one is confused about the Maryland flag.

Opinion based blog, and yeah. :P

hey make a list of the states themselves ranked in order, ex 1. blah because blah blah blah etc

That would offend almost every American on JetPunk, and there's a lot of Americans on JetPunk.

After looking through the comments, it seems that only me and one other person are the only ones who have a distaste for Maryland's flag. I find this surprising because I hate pretty much everything about it. 1, Checkerboard patterns don't look good on a flag. 2, why are the checkerboards slanted? 3, the red and white things look like they belong on a playing card. 4, there is no border in between the four quadrants, creating an unpleasant transition when scanning from one quadrant to another. 5, don't use black and yellow together unless you're making Batman's flag. I understand that a lot of people find this flag beautiful, and it did, of course, make the #3 spot. It's just my opinion. Also, sad to see Rhode Island down towards the end. It's a great design, just needs a left border and better contrasting colors. There's nothing wrong with a square flag as far as I'm concerned.

Rhode Island's flag looks like a homemade pennant hanging beside the broken screen door on a junky roadside knick knack tourist shop. The type where 2 people can't pass each other in between the weathered wood tables full of thoroughly unorganized crap that you dig down through and find more completely unrelated crap, unfolded clothes, broken pieces of all variety and someone's open bag of chips they didn't pay for. Welcome to Route 47 Pik 'N' Pak.

This is a flashback. This is the very first link I followed to JetPunk.

All hail the Republic of California! This flag is what made me think California was a country when I was 6-7.

actually California Is the worst

Ohio at least thought outside the box when it came to flags. Nebraska, Virginia, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, Idaho, New Hampshire, Utah, Kentucky, Vermont, Michigan, and New York, all put the state seal on a blue background; Missouri looks like Paraguay; Kansas, Wisconsin, and Montana are so boring they had to put the state name in big, bold letters on the flag; Indiana has a random assortment of stars; North Dakota's eagle looks like it is choking on the ribbon; West Virginia has macaroni on their flag; and North Carolina took Texas's flag and put some words on it. Alabama is underrated for the simplicity but style; Louisiana is underrated for use of a pelican; New Mexico, Alaska, and Maryland are all great.

Arizona is the best

r.i.p my home state

Thank you Mississippi for finally removing one of the ugliest flags in existence

Honestly the design of the old flag was good if not for the cultural connotations.

I actually rather like this new flag for Mississippi! Don't have a lot to compliment the state on, but at least they have one thing I can appreciate now.

I would rather have Wyoming or Arizona in #1.

I would like Wyoming more if the seal were not branded onto the bison.

That's BS! The Texas flag is NOT a rip-off of Chile, and it actually looks clean, unlike all of those STUPID blue backgrounds with seal you put ahead of Texas!

Any flag that's just blue with the state seal on ought to have automatically dropped to the bottom (with those that are just the state seal on a different colour background above, but only as they know there are non-blue colours). Even if Texas' flag is plagiarized, it's still a flag rather than a seal put on a bit of cloth, and so superior.

I agree that it does look better than the blue flags with the state seal are worse than Texas. That does not, however, mean that Texas did not rip-off Chile's flag.

The Georgian flag actually seems pretty cool.

Wow. Mississippi jumped from #50 all the way to #8. Way to go, Mississippi!

... Never expected I'd be saying that in my lifetime.

When I see Arkansas I always think it could be a logo on a sauce bottle, probably some spicy one.

I'd buy it

In my opinion the worst flags are those of Massachusetts and Illinois because of their lack of contrast on white pages and to a bright sky. I actually really like the flag of Tennessee because the stars are ordered in this weird way.

The horse's head on New Jersey's flag was a design offer from Vito Corleone. New Jersey couldn't resist.

Aw come on, you gotta give Georgia credit for defacing the battle flag with this weird building and the gamechanging phrase "In God We Trust". That makes it much better. In fact I can't even recognise that it used to be the battle flag.

Most of these flags have pretty much the same concept and design. Only the unique ones like New Mexico, Wyoming and California are the cool ones. Also Mississippi's got a lot better.

New Mexico, Maryland, Alaska, Mississippi, and Ohio are the best flags. Ohio, Tennessee, and Hawaii get points for uniqueness. The states with the crest on a blue background are boring.

In my opinion, this is too state-centric.

Low key annoyed that Ohio is so low on this - at least it's a unique design instead of another blue flag with a seal in the middle. Also I don't know why we're complaining about Texas having a design similar to the Chilean flag... half of Europe uses similar designs to one another so it's not exactly unprecedented.

Love the new Mississippi flag though.

It seems like half of the states have flags that are so similar and mundane that they had to place the state name in big letters on it to let people know which state it belongs to. Also, Texas plagiarized Chile and North Carolina plagiarized Texas. Ohio is still underrated for being unique.

I don't really like Mississippi's new flag.

Ohio and Tennessee's are much better.

Ohio has 17 stars because it was the 17th state I think.

What's wrong with Alabama's flag? I personally like the simplicity of it.

It uses the confederate battle flag, which definitely has negative connotations.

I think Rhode Island is missing the border to look like it is "attached" to the flagpole

You seem to have made a mistake in the Georgia review. It originally had the battle flag, and it now has the national flag, not the other way around.

Maryland's flag is complicated as hell. Also, that was the flag of the Kingdom of Hawaii used to establish good diplomatic relations with the UK and the USA before the latter oh so kindly annexed it. Knowing this helps you appreciate how insensitive the "get your act together" comment is.

There's a Mitsubishi in Tennessee Flag