Colonel's colour m/1686 (Skaraborg)	Dragoon Colonel's colour (Liv-dragoons)	Company standard m/1686 reverse (Västgöta)	Company standard m/1686 obverse (Västgöta)

The most valuable possessions a regiment owned were their colours which were carried in every battle and marked the place of each unit in the battlefield. The colours were made with expensive material and artistic decorations in order to show the status of the regiment. To lose the colours was a great shame and conquering the enemy's colours was a great honour. For this reason it was usually near the colours where the hardest fighting occurred and soldiers were required to swear an oath to never abandon the colours.

Depending on troop type the colours had different shape and size. The infantry colours were very large. In the Swedish army during the Great Northern War, these were on average 1.84 metre high and 2.16 metre wide. The cavalry colours were square shaped and considerably smaller, each side of the square just little more than a half metre long. The Swedish cavalry also usually had two different motifs on the obverse and reverse side of the standards, i.e. a provincial coat of arms on the obverse and the royal cipher on the reverse side. This arrangement was also true for the dragoons who officially were mounted infantry but in practise functioned as cavalry. The dragoon colours had however a different shape and size of their colours. These were swallow tailed and had a height of about a metre and a slightly longer width.

Regardless of troop type, each Swedish company had their own colour during the Great Northern War, which meant that a typical regiment would have eight colours or standards. Seven of these were called company colours or company standards while the colonel's company had a colonel's colour or standard which was always white. After the Great Northern War the number of colours was reduced to two per battalion (which consisted of four companies) while the cavalry and dragoons continued to have one colour for each company. Then in the 19th century the number of infantry colours was yet again cut in half so that each battalion would carry just one colour. Later it was decided that all regiments would only have one colour each, but at that time the colours had for a long time only had symbolic importance.

However, during the Great Northern War the colours were still of great importance. And in an age where it was hard to find reliable information about the outcome of a battle, the number of conquered colours were compelling evidence of victory which were presented to the people and foreign ambassadors. Likewise, it was hard to conceal defeat when an army had lost many colours.

During the earlier part of the 17th century, colonels had a great influence over the appearance of their field signs, but starting in the 1670s this was determined at a central level in a series of regulations, whereby the provincial coat arms came to adorn the colours and standards of the Swedish army. The table below describes the development of the infantry colours. The cavalry standard had the national arms as a motif on the standard from the very beginning and m/1675 had numbers indicating the year they were manufactured instead of the infantry's flaming grenades. m/1686 then became the regulation in force for the cavalry throughout the 18th century.

In cases where several regiments came from the same province, there were variants with striped flags with the coat of arms of the provincial capital in the middle or a roundel and corner flames instead of a laurel wreath. The latter also applied to those provinces whose coats of arms had a field colour that was considered less suitable for company colours of ordinary regiments (white, which was reserved for high-status regiments, or black, which was a mourning colour).

By far the best-known of the regulations in the table is the one from 1686, which largely remained in effect until 1766. In connection with its introduction, model drawings of colours and standards were painted, which were then to be followed when new field signs were manufactured. However, the model drawings were not always followed to the letter, so one should also study the preserved colours and standards that remain today.

There is also a page on infantry colours during the 18th century.