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I've just started watching Stargate SG-1 for the first time. I'm curious; what are the red green and blue lines all throughout the hallway floors of the base supposed to be?

I noticed in one scene of S1:E7 that there were pipes colored the same way on the ceiling. I'm assuming it's just part of the plumbing.

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    Pretty sure they're just guides to aid navigation through otherwise featureless corridors. You see them in some hospitals - "x-ray? Just follow the blue line"
    – HorusKol
    Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 6:02
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    Similarly with pipes it is a relatively standard thing to do to colour them based on the contents. For example, all red pipes have steam, all blue pipes have clean water, all yellow pipes are waste etc. This doesn't relate to the lines on the floor which are almost certainly about navigation as HorusKol said.
    – Eric Nolan
    Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 9:23

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You're presumably referring to the stripes on the floor that look like this; Navigation Stripes

These are commonly used in large organisation, particularly public facing ones, to help people find their way around. It is possible that in Stargate episodes the stipes are just coloured, in a more modern organisation there will be additional differentiators like words or images as shown in the image to help colourblind individuals use the stripes.

The pipes are unlikely to be showing people the way to various locations, they're colour coded to show what is running through the pipes. Other standards are available.

ANSI/ASME A13.1

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    And while this is likely, can you offer any confirmation?
    – Valorum
    Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 11:19
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    As far as I can tell from Cheyenne Mountains appearances in various publicity and documentary videos, the complex itself does not have these markings. So confirmation from there is unlikely. As far as I know they were never used directly in the show. So this answer relies on Occams razor unfortunately.
    – Jontia
    Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 12:03
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According to the show's producer and senior writer, Joseph Mallozzi, the floor lines have no particular in-universe meaning and were evidently just set dressing, presumably to add a little bit of background colour to sets that would otherwise have been various shades of grey and brown.

Q. Did the lines have any actual behind-the-scenes meaning? Or just decoration?

JM: Nope. To the best of my knowledge, no special meaning.

Via Twitter

As pointed out in another answer, these are presumably queue lines, allowing people to be directed verbally to a particular location.

Interestingly, courtesy of an auction of set blueprints where the lines are visible, and the cleaned-up SGC floor plans from Richard Dean Anderson and Joseph Malozzi's official websites, we can actually map where the various colours go.

enter image description here enter image description here

The lines travel from the main elevator into the complex. The blue line leads to the Secondary Elevator, the green on the right leads to the Stair (to Level 28), the red line leads to the Primary Gateroom Entrance and the green line in the middle leads to the Infirmary.

enter image description here

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  • Even if the lines in themselves had no particular plan from the start, it still would have been logical (and easier) for the construction crew to have created them to effectively look like they'd been planned. "Okay, we need some line just to lighten the place up, so we'll do a blue one from here to here, red from here to here, and green from here to here."
    – Keith Morrison
    Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 18:18
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    @KeithMorrison - It would appear that the set designer gave it more thought than the producer, who probably just mumbled something about the sets looking a bit drab
    – Valorum
    Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 18:31

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