Wanderlust World Wanderlust World The Statue of Liberty's color is not a shade of green paint. It is the natural patina that formed on its copper skin.
When dedicated, the statue was a bright, shiny "penny" copper color—reddish-brown metallic.
Over ~20–30 years, the copper reacted with oxygen, moisture, sulfur compounds, and chlorides in New York Harbor's air. This created a stable surface layer of copper carbonate, copper sulfate, and copper chloride minerals (brochantite, malachite, azurite, atacamite). The resulting blue-green hue (often called "verdigris") is a protective crust that prevents further corrosion.
The patina is ~0.1–0.2 mm thick and will not wash off. It is monitored by the National Park Service; the statue has never been painted. The torch flame is gold-leafed (restored 1986), but the figure itself is pure patinated copper.
So the "shade of green" is natural mineral patina on copper—a living geochemical record of a century+ of harbor exposure.