RAL in practice

A RAL code is only worth something once it holds up outside the colour book. These examples show where that happens: on a 231,000 m² roof in the desert, on a fire engine that has to stay visible through smoke, and in a school corridor where colour shows the way.

One of the largest metal roofs in the world

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

More than 231,000 m² of metal, over 900 tonnes in weight and more than 100,000 litres of paint. The roof covers 210,000 m², with a further 21,000 m² of façade cladding. A roll-forming line was built on site for the 24,600-odd metal profiles, some of them 96 metres long. A crew of 28 needed almost ten months to produce some 600 kilometres of profile, at heights of up to fifty metres. The extreme outdoor temperatures placed particular demands on both the material and the coating.

RAL 9006

Albert Schweitzer school

Hanover, Germany

In the school corridors, blocks of colour are used for orientation: continuous bands at eye level in lilac and lime green, with frames in a contrasting shade. Anyone who knows the building recognises the wing by its colour before reading the sign — which is exactly what colour is good at in large buildings.

Deutsche Bahn

Regional transport, Germany

For Deutsche Bahn regional transport, colour use is fixed in a set list of RAL colours: traffic red as the recognition colour, with light grey, basalt grey and jet black for the remaining surfaces, and anthracite grey where the design calls for it.

RAL 3020 RAL 7035 RAL 7012 RAL 9005 RAL 7016

Rosenbauer PANTHER

Ostrava Airport, Czech Republic

The airport fire service at Ostrava has the first PANTHER 6×6 with a luminous red coating. A fluorescent colour is not an aesthetic choice here: at dusk and in smoke, the vehicle has to be noticed sooner than an ordinary red one.

RAL 3024

Sielaff coffee machines

Sielaff coffee machines are available in every RAL colour, in pure orange or yellow green for instance. For a machine that ends up in someone else’s interior, that is the difference between fitting in and standing out.

RAL 2004 RAL 6018

Loewe 3D Orchestra

With 3D Orchestra, Loewe introduced a wireless loudspeaker system for home cinemas. The speakers come in RAL colours, so that a set-up of four or more cabinets fits into the interior rather than dominating it.

BRIG inflatable boats

BRIG inflatables can be ordered in almost any RAL colour. Hull and tubes are made to colour, so a boat is built as its owner’s own design rather than picked from a fixed range.

Emergency exit signs

Emergency exit signs are leaf green. That it is the same green everywhere is no coincidence but the whole point of a safety colour: recognition must not depend on who supplied the sign.

RAL 6002

Fixing a colour of your own?

Browse all RAL colours with their official names and LRV values, or order loose colour samples to judge the colour in real life.

All colours Order colour samples