To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

The Intercollegiate Bureau assigned Washington State University a hood lined “bright red above silver gray” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. A 1948 list from the Bureau revised the color of the lining to “red over silver”, but a 1969 IBAC list reverted to bright red above silver gray and specifically stated that the division of the two colors was per chevron. The Bureau used a per chevron arrangement of the university’s colors because Ohio State University had already been assigned a bright red hood lining with a silver gray chevron, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology had a similar hood lining pattern.

“Bright red” was the term the IBAC typically used to describe scarlet, not Washington State’s official shade of crimson, so the fabric sample the university sent the Bureau must have been a brighter shade of crimson than typical. “Silver gray” is how the Intercollegiate Bureau described a satin lining fabric in a light shade of gray, which was used for institutions having either light gray or silver as a school color. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) accurately described Washington State University’s hood lining as crimson above silver gray, divided per chevron.