Liverpool FC Colours & How They’ve Changed | OneFootball

From amazing Academy players that made it into the first team, such as Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and Steven Gerrard, through to being the country’s most successful football club, there are so many things that LFC is known for. Undoubtedly one of the main ones is the colour of the kit, which has given itself to the club’s nickname of ‘the Reds’.

Thanks to the fact that different kit manufacturers have been given the responsibility of making the home kit, as well as the materials used for it, the actual colour of kit that Liverpool have played in has changed over the years.

Lining Up in Reds for the First Time

It is easy to imagine that Liverpool have always played in red. The truth, though, is that the club didn’t wear the colour for many years. When the club was first formed back in 1892, coming off the back of Everton’s decision to depart Anfield for pastures new, the kit was made of navy shorts and socks underneath a top that was blue and white.

Ben Sutherland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

They remained the colours worn by Liverpool for the first four years of the club’s existence, at which point a red top was introduced for the first time, being paired with either black shorts and socks or white shorts and red socks, depending on what was called for.

In 1955, the Liverbird appeared on the badge for the first time. Then Billy Shankly made the decision in 1964 to get his players lining up in an all-red kit. The decision was taken in order to give the club something of a psychological boost, with the famous Scot saying that ‘the players looked like giants’ in their game against Anderlecht.

Ian St John wrote in his autobiography that it was ‘red for danger, red for power’. The Reds won 3-0, so the colour stayed in place from that day forward. It was in the kit that Liverpool won the FA Cup for the first time, which had been a major aim for ‘Shanks’.

Different Manufacturers

As you might imagine, a club of Liverpool’s stature has been able to work with some of the biggest kit manufacturers in the world of sport. The likes of Nike, Reebok and Adidas have all looked to outbid each other over the years for the right to be the manufacturers of one of the most famous kits on the planet, paying more than a pretty penny for the honour to do so.

That wasn’t always the case, however. From the moment that the club was first formed in 1892 up until midway through the 1940s, the creation of the Liverpool kit was done in-house, keeping things cheap and simple.

In 1946, a combination of an in-house team and the sports manufacturer Umbro created the kit, then Umbro left in 1947 to return it to an in-house activity. It was in 1973 that the production of Liverpool’s kits moved to an outside company in its entirety for the first time, seeing Umbro given the responsibility outright.

They kept on making it until 1985, which is when Adidas came on board for the first time. They made it for a little over a decade, being replaced by Reebok in 1996 before returning in 2006. Warrior had the role between 2012 and 2015, with New Balance taking over before Nike made it between 2020 and 2025. That was when Adidas returned once more.

Changing Colours

It is obviously all but impossible to describe kit colours in any kind of meaningful way, but there is no question that the actual colour of red used by the club has been different over the years. The very first kits were a deeper red, more akin to what you might imagine the primary colour to be. Very little about the kit changed over the next couple of decades, bar the likes of a change to the neckline that was brought in every now and then. A splash of white on both the colour and the badge featuring the Liverbird made the red stand out a bit more in the 1950s, but that was it.

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The shade of red grew brighter in the middle of the 1960s, altering again slightly a decade later and then becoming slightly duller towards the end of the decade. As the 1980s got underway, that brightness returned once more, with sponsors such as Hitachi and Crown Paints adorning the front. Things got lighter again in the 1990s, until the 1995-1996 season when they went slightly darker again. They brightened back up after this, only to become slightly dimmer again at the turn of the millennium. Things went even darker in the 2010s, both on and off the pitch, altering through the decades since.