Half-staff is the most visible flag protocol in American life and the one most often got wrong, usually in the mechanics rather than the intent. It is worth knowing why a flag is lowered, who decides it, and the one step almost everybody skips when raising it.
What Half-Staff Means and Who Decides It
Half-staff is a flag flown at roughly the midpoint of the pole as a mark of mourning or remembrance. Only the President, a state governor, or the mayor of the District of Columbia can order it, and each has authority over different flags. The President's order covers federal properties nationwide. A governor's order covers that state. Everyone else follows.
Private citizens and businesses are not bound by any of it, which surprises people. You may lower your own flag whenever you judge it appropriate, and most households simply follow whatever the President and their governor have called. The word itself has a split. Half-staff is the term ashore. Half-mast is the term at sea and on naval installations, and the two are not interchangeable to anyone who works around either.
Why the Flag Is at Half-Staff Right Now
If you have just noticed flags down and want to know why, the answer is almost always one of three things. A presidential proclamation following the death of a government official, a former official, or a national figure. A governor's proclamation following a death or a tragedy within that state. Or one of the fixed annual observances written into law, which come around on the same dates every year.
The mechanism matters more than any single instance, because it tells you where to look. Federal orders are published as presidential proclamations. State orders are published by the governor's office, and most states run a notification list you can subscribe to. If flags are down in your town and nowhere else, it is a local or state order rather than a national one.
You will not find a live half-staff status on this page. Any post that tells you the flag is down today is wrong by tomorrow morning, which makes the proclamation itself the only reliable check. Go there rather than to a blog post, ours included.
One more thing catches people out. A federal order and a state order can be running at the same time for different reasons, and they do not have to start or end together. That is why you will occasionally see a federal building and the city hall across the street disagreeing about whether the flag is down. Neither one is wrong. They are following different proclamations.
How Long the Flag Stays Down
Duration is set by whoever issued the order, and it varies more than people assume. Some proclamations run for a single day. Others run until sunset on the day of interment, which means the end date is not known when the order is issued. The longest are set in law rather than left to judgment, and the death of a sitting or former President carries a thirty-day period.
The practical consequence for a household or a business is that you should read the order rather than guess at it. Assuming a single day and raising the flag the next morning is the most common half-staff error after the peak-first mistake, and it happens because the assumption is reasonable and simply wrong.
How to Raise and Lower a Flag to Half-Staff Correctly
The peak-first rule
This is the step people skip. To place a flag at half-staff, you first raise it briskly all the way to the peak of the pole, hold it there for a moment, and only then lower it slowly to the half-staff position. The flag is never simply run up halfway.
The reason is symbolic and it is the whole point of the gesture. The flag is honored to its full height first, and mourning is then marked by lowering it from that position. A flag raised directly to the middle has skipped the part that gives the act meaning.
Lowering at the end of the day
At the end of the day the sequence reverses. The flag is raised briskly back to the peak, held there, and then lowered slowly and ceremoniously all the way down for the night. Peak first, in both directions.
If your flag stays up overnight, it must be properly illuminated, which is a separate rule with its own requirements and is worth getting right. We covered illumination and the federal Flag Code in detail.
What to do on a pole with no halyard
Half-staff is a halyard function. A flag on a fixed wall bracket, a house-mounted angled pole, or a sleeve-mounted flag cannot be lowered, and there is nothing wrong with that. The recognized alternative is to attach a black mourning ribbon or streamer to the top of the staff, the same length as the flag, which reads as the intent without pretending to a mechanism the pole does not have.
If you want the ability to observe half-staff properly, that is a halyard pole decision made at purchase. Our residential flagpoles and commercial flagpoles both use halyard systems for exactly this reason.
The Days the Flag Flies at Half-Staff Every Year
Several observances are fixed in law rather than proclaimed each time. Peace Officers Memorial Day in mid-May. Memorial Day, where the flag flies at half-staff until noon and is then raised to full height for the rest of the day, which is a detail almost nobody gets right. Patriot Day on September 11. National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Day in early October. And Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day on December 7.
The Memorial Day rule is the one to memorize, because a flag left at half-staff all day on Memorial Day inverts the meaning of the observance. Half-staff until noon mourns the dead. Full staff from noon onward honors the living who carry on. Veterans Day has its own rule, which we cover in flying the flag on Veterans Day.
These fixed days sit alongside whatever proclamations happen to be running rather than instead of them. If a presidential order overlaps one of them, follow the order, since it will normally be the broader instruction. And if you are the person who actually walks out to the pole, put the fixed dates in a calendar rather than trusting yourself to remember five of them across a year. Every institution that gets this consistently right has someone with a reminder.
Patriot Day, September 11
Sunrise to sunset
On Patriot Day the flag is flown at half-staff for the whole day, and it is displayed from sunrise to sunset unless it is illuminated. Raise it to the peak first, lower it to half-staff, and leave it there until you take it down. There is no midday change on September 11.
We have a particular reason to take this date seriously. The American flag that three firefighters raised in the rubble at Ground Zero, the one Thomas Franklin photographed and the one now held by the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, was traced back to us and was made right here in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. You can read the story of our 9/11 flag in full.
Displaying at a business or a school
For a business or a school, decide the day before rather than the morning of. Assign someone to the pole for the raise and the lower, brief them on the peak-first sequence, and if you hold a moment of silence, tie it to the flag rather than to an announcement over a speaker.
Schools often use the date as a teaching moment about protocol, and the peak-first rule is a good one to demonstrate because students can see immediately why it exists. Our flag etiquette guide covers the everyday rules alongside it.
A worn flag at half-staff undercuts the whole gesture, so check the condition of yours before September and replace it if the fly end has gone. You can shop American flags for Patriot Day and have it on the pole with time to spare.
FAQ
Why has the American flag been at half-staff?
Because someone with the authority to order it did so. That is the President for federal properties nationwide, a state governor for that state, or the mayor of the District of Columbia. Orders follow the death of an official or national figure, a specific tragedy, or one of the fixed annual observances written into law. Check the presidential proclamations and your governor's office for the current reason.
Are US flags being flown at half-staff today?
That changes constantly and no static page can answer it reliably. Check the current presidential proclamations for federal orders and your state governor's office for state orders, since a state order can apply where a federal one does not. Many governors' offices run a free notification list worth subscribing to.
Why are most flags at half-staff today?
When flags are down nationwide it is almost always a presidential proclamation following a death or a national tragedy. When they are down in one state or one town only, it is a governor's order or a local observance. The scope of what you are seeing tells you which authority issued it and therefore where to look for the reason.
