Why Are School Buses Yellow?

They could have made school buses any color; red, green, purple, white with stripes, or rainbow. Why, then, are school buses yellow? Was it because yellow is a happy color, and kids just love going to school? Afraid not. The yellow color on a school bus came about for some practical reasons, most of which was safety.

The official name of the color of a school bus is National School Bus Glossy Yellow. The original color was called National School Bus Chrome but was changed because the paint color contained lead in the pigment. It originated in 1939 after Dr. Frank W. Cyr, a university professor at Columbia in New York, held a conference that officially established the parameters and standards for school bus construction. This included the paint color of the buses.

Each state (which numbered 48 at the time) was in attendance at the conference, and the National Bureau of Standards (which is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), set the color as the standard for all school buses. It was then officially known as Federal Standard №595a, Color 13432. A 42-page pamphlet eventually resulted from the conference that set all the standards on how school buses would be painted and manufactured from then on.

The color was adopted because black lettering was easy to see in the early morning hours and during the late afternoon. Another…