How Many NFL Teams Use Blue in Their Logos? (Plus Other Colors)

Introduction to NFL team logos

NFL team logos are the visual shorthand fans recognize instantly - on merchandise, stadium signage, broadcast graphics, and official team branding. A logo typically combines one or more design elements (a primary mark, wordmark, colors, shapes, and symbols) that become consistent across uniforms and marketing. In practice, “how many nfl teams have blue in their logo” depends on what you count as “blue,” but the most useful approach is to treat a team as having blue if a clear blue hue appears anywhere in its primary logo mark.

Color matters because it’s a fast, emotional cue. Color psychology and symbolism in sports logos aren’t hard rules, but there’s a measurable impact on perception: blues often signal trust, stability, and depth, while reds tend to read as energetic and aggressive. For teams, this means nfl team logo design isn’t only aesthetic - it’s part of how fans form identity and memory around the brand. Team branding also relies on consistency, so once a team commits to a color scheme, it’s reinforced across years of merchandise and media.

Below, you’ll find a practical overview of blue color in nfl team logos, followed by other common logo color themes (red, orange, yellow, green) and frequent imagery (stars and football shapes). This is a branding-focused look, not a legal or manufacturing report - so the goal is understanding patterns you can see at a glance.

How blue shows up in NFL team branding

Blue color in nfl team team logos usually appears as a primary color (large blocks of blue) or as a secondary accent (thin outlines, numbers, or background fields). The blue can range from deep navy to brighter “royal” blue, which can change the overall vibe even when it’s still “blue.” That’s why nfl teams and their logo colors are often discussed by tone rather than by a single exact shade.

From a graphic design perspective, blue is also a “connector” color: it pairs well with white for contrast and reads clearly on both dark and light backgrounds. Many NFL teams use blue alongside white to maintain visibility across uniforms and digital graphics. In team branding terms, this makes blue an efficient foundation for consistent color schemes in branding.

To answer the headline question: based on commonly used modern primary marks (including official variants used across seasons), a majority of NFL teams incorporate some blue element in their primary logo. In other words, the answer to “how many nfl teams have blue in their logo” is in the high teens - typically around the 18–20 range, depending on how you count minor accents and color-tone variants.

NFL teams with blue logos (and who uses it most)

Here’s a team-level view of nfl teams with blue logos. I’m using “blue logos” broadly: any visible navy/royal/medium-blue portion in the primary team mark or its most standard logo variant.

• Arizona Cardinals (dark blue accents)
• Atlanta Falcons (blue used in secondary accents)
• Baltimore Ravens (purple with blue-leaning tones in the branding system; often read alongside blue)
• Buffalo Bills (blue primary color)
• Carolina Panthers (blue accents in the color system)
• Chicago Bears (blue present in secondary elements)
• Dallas Cowboys (blue accents/lines)
• Detroit Lions (blue accent details)
• Denver Broncos (blue in the historical and modern branding system)
• Houston Texans (blue is present in the palette)
• Indianapolis Colts (blue primary/major component)
• Jacksonville Jaguars (blue accents)
• Kansas City Chiefs (blue used as an accent/outline)
• Los Angeles Chargers (blue primary color)
• Miami Dolphins (blue primary color)
• New England Patriots (blue present as a core color)
• New York Giants (blue accents)
• New York Jets (blue primary color)
• Philadelphia Eagles (blue accent details)
• Seattle Seahawks (blue appears in the logo palette)
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers (blue accents/lines)
• Washington Commanders (blue accents)
• Los Angeles Rams (blue-gray tones in common branding)

Primary-blue users. If you interpret “primarily use blue” as the team where blue dominates the logo composition (not merely an outline), the shortlist is smaller and clearer. Typically, teams like the Buffalo Bills, Indianapolis Colts, Los Angeles Chargers, Miami Dolphins, and New York Jets are the most recognizable as primarily blue-logo teams in day-to-day branding.

Note on counting. Logo color schemes in branding can vary by season, redesign, and approved variants (for example, light vs. dark backgrounds). That variability is the main reason any number for “how many nfl teams have blue in their logo” can shift by a couple of teams depending on your strictness about minor accents or bluish grays.

Comparing other colors in NFL logos (red, orange, yellow, green)

Color psychology in team branding doesn’t only apply to blue. Fans instantly associate certain teams with red-forward marks, bright contrasts, or warm accent colors. To compare, you can ask the same question for other colors: which nfl teams have red in their logo, how many nfl teams have orange in their logo, and so on.

As a practical rule, the NFL color mix is skewed toward high-contrast primaries - red, blue, green, and yellow appear most often as either dominant or accent colors. However, “dominant” is rarer than “present,” because many teams place a smaller color as a trim. So you’ll often find that “how many nfl teams have red in their logo” is relatively high, while “how many nfl teams have orange in their logo” is lower because orange is more commonly used as an accent rather than a base.

Color	What it often signals	Typical logo usage
Red	High energy, intensity	Often primary, sometimes accent outlines
Orange	Heat, boldness	Less common; usually a secondary burst/trim
Yellow	Visibility, optimism	Moderate use; highlights, wings, or trim
Green	Growth, steadiness	More common in secondary accents; some primary palettes

High-level comparisons. Based on standard primary logo marks, the count for red presence is typically among the top groups (often comparable to or slightly above blue). Orange is present in fewer teams, and green and yellow tend to cluster in specific franchises where the palette is a distinctive identity feature. If you’re building a dataset for “nfl team logo design” analysis, the cleanest method is to standardize “presence thresholds” (for example, any non-trivial blue pixel area) and decide how to handle “blue-gray” tones in some marks.

Example of what “presence” looks like. Red may appear as a stripe on a uniform-related logo, as a small element in a crest, or as a dominant block. Orange and yellow commonly show up as highlight fields or linework rather than full backgrounds. Green tends to appear in both dominant palettes (for certain teams) and in accent details (for others), which again affects the exact counts.

Other common elements: stars and football imagery

Beyond color, nfl team logo design frequently uses recognizable symbols - especially stars and football imagery. These elements help teams create immediate symbolism in sports logos. A star can function as a signifier of excellence, geography, or simply as a strong graphic shape, while football shapes and stylized balls anchor the design to the sport.

Stars in NFL logos. Stars appear in a notable subset of NFL team logos. So when someone searches “how many nfl teams have a star in their logo,” the most helpful answer is that it’s a meaningful minority rather than a rare detail - often in the double digits depending on what counts as a star-like shape. Teams that use obvious star motifs in their primary mark typically include franchises such as the Dallas Cowboys, Carolina Panthers (in some emblem variants), and Kansas City Chiefs (star-related design language), among others.

Football imagery. Likewise, “what nfl teams have a football in their logo” generally points to teams that integrate a football outline, ball silhouette, or ball-as-a-central motif into the crest. Common examples include the Houston Texans brand language (football-forward identity cues) and other teams whose logos include a football shape as part of a shield or badge composition. In datasets, you’ll want to define “football in the logo” clearly - does it need to be a literal ball silhouette, or do stylized oval shapes count?

• Stars often appear as single-point accents or multi-star clusters within a shield or wordmark environment
• Football imagery tends to show up in badge crests, central emblems, or team name-integrated marks
• Uniform-adjacent graphics (stripes, feathers, wings, or helmet-adjacent shapes) frequently correlate with franchise colors and mascots

Design impact on team identity. These symbol choices reinforce brand consistency. When a logo includes a star or football element, it becomes a repeatable pattern that designers can carry into decals, stadium branding, and social graphics. That repeatability is a major reason fans associate specific teams with specific visual cues even before they read the wordmark.

Conclusion: using logo design patterns to understand team identity

If you’re looking for a direct answer, the best practical takeaway is this: how many nfl teams have blue in their logo is typically in the high teens (commonly around 18–20) when you count any clear blue element in the primary logo mark. The list of nfl teams with blue logos is broad, but the number of teams where blue is unmistakably the dominant brand color is smaller - think franchises with a consistently blue-forward look in standard marks.

Color comparisons add context. In many logo design systems, red often rivals blue in the number of teams that include it, while orange appears less frequently and usually as an accent. Meanwhile, stars and football imagery add an extra layer of meaning: they aren’t just decoration; they’re part of the symbolism in sports logos that strengthens identity across media.

If you’re doing deeper logo design analysis - such as comparing nfl team logo design choices across decades - the key is to standardize your counting rules (dominant color vs. any presence, star-like shapes vs. true five-point stars, literal football silhouette vs. abstract ball-like forms). With those rules in place, you can move from “guessing by sight” to a defensible, repeatable dataset.

Quick reference: what you can conclude from this guide

• Blue is widely represented across NFL team marks, often placing the blue count in the high teens
• Red presence is also common, making it one of the most frequent competing colors to blue
• Stars and football imagery appear in a noticeable subset of teams, supporting instant recognition
• Logo identity becomes stronger when colors and symbols remain consistent across seasons and formats