For most folks, buying a car is a major decision, with a long list of factors to weigh before pulling the trigger. Now, according to one study, paint color plays a key role in vehicle purchasing decisions.
Per the findings in a recent study from automotive paint and finish company Axalta, a vehicle’s paint color was a key factor in 88 percent of vehicle purchasing decisions. The findings were released as part of the company’s recent Automotive Color Preferences 2021 Consumer Survey, which collected survey responses from over 4,000 individuals between the ages of 25 and 60 from the U.S., China, Germany, and Mexico.
“The psychology of color is a powerful influencing factor in automotive purchasing decisions,” said Global Color Manager, Mobility Coatings at Axalta, Nancy Lockhart. “Frequently, color reflects the personality of the vehicle owner. What’s interesting is that elegance, stability and positivity were predominant color characteristics desired by respondents surveyed.”
According to the survey, the favorite vehicle paint color among owners in the U.S. was black, netting 30 percent of responses. White was second at 15 percent, followed by blue at 14 percent, gray at 13 percent, and red and silver both at 10 percent.
Further insights include the paint color of vehicles currently owned, with U.S. respondents indicating that the majority of vehicles were painted black with 21 percent. Sixteen percent of respondents’ vehicles were gray, 15 percent white, 14 percent silver, 13 percent blue, and 12 percent red.
The survey also found regional color preference differences, as well as color preference differences between countries.
Interestingly, finish was another major factor with regard to vehicle paint color preferences. While high-gloss was the preferred finish in the U.S., Germany, and Mexico, the survey found that Chinese buyers were evenly split between a high-gloss finish and matte finish, with 48 percent preferring high-gloss, and 52 percent preferring matte. Additionally, 80 percent of respondents in the U.S. preferred a monochromatic vehicle color rather than a two-tone vehicle color.
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Comments
I’m completely over the monochromatic trend. Give me a nice color any day.
monochromatic means all one color.
Yes, all the various shades of gray are still gray. I hate it, but I should’ve used “achromatic” to include black and white as well.
They really had to do a survey to reach this conclusion? This is why color choices are so important. That’s the only thing most people truly know about cars is the color.
Yet they year after year still buy black gray and white in large numbers.
Good to see blue moving up as for a while Blue was not offered on every model for a while.
It isn’t that simple. Very few people custom order cars; the vast majority of buyers choose whatever happens to be sitting on a dealer’s lot. So really the dealers choose the colors that people end up buying – and dealers seem to prefer black, white, grey and silver. So even though GM offers tons of other colors, unless dealers choose those colors, they won’t be produced.
For a while.
Some shade of blue has been offered by manufacturers for decades on most of their models. Light blues, medium blues, dark blues, bright/electric blues, blue/gray.
Now, GM did discontinue dark blue on the Buick Envision for 2022. They offered it for one model year and then stopped it. However, this is not unusual. They did the same with the 2006 Impala and Glacier Blue Metallic (I owned one in that color…it was a silver blue.) They also did the same with the 2015 Equinox and Terrain with Sea Grass Green Metallic (which I have on my 2015 Equinox).
GM also recently discontinued Pacific Blue Metallic on the Equinox, but they will have 3 blues on the 2022 models.
Blue cars were really hard to come by during most of the 1990s, being usurped by greens and even purples. For a few years you couldn’t buy a blue Honda Accord, but you could get them in three shades of green. Chrysler offered the first-gen Stratus & Cirrus in blue only in the first year, and for the next five years the closest you could get was purple. My local Pontiac dealership looked like Christmas, because most of the cars on the lot were either green, red or white.
brother is a leaser,whatever the dealers wants to dump at the cheapest price is fine to him.
Dodge has the best color pallet. They go bold with the colors and accents and I think they get more sales that way. I wish GM would produce more of the cool colors. I saw one of those shock colored Camaro’s and it looked great. Sunset orange metallic was also a great color that was on the Trans Am, Camaro, Colorado and Silverado for a few years.
Automotive colors are so incredibly boring these days, inside and out. There are some exceptions of course. I have seen some attractive new greens recently for example. I was so happy when I found my Ram in beautiful Western Brown (Deep Auburn for Jeep and Chrysler). It’s such a beautiful rich color. It’s also very rare, which on a vehicle which sold in huge numbers, is a nice bonus.
Glad to see two tones aren’t popular as the whole white or black roof just looks silly. They asked in a study I did the other day if I would pay $500 for a black roof. Heck no. It looks cheap (is cheap) and in Texas is hot. I much prefer some color (nothing too loud like an orange or yellow on my daily’s) as my truck is medium green and wifes is a lighter blue. My buddies group chat is the running joke that most of their wives have black explorers. Literally 5 at the same time had black explorers. A few have since traded for a bigger SUV but still black or dark grey.
I may go silver next time, never had that color (have had Blue, Green, Red, Dark Red, Orange, Black and Yellow over the years) and it seems light enough to stay cooler in Texas, doesn’t look to show dirt as much, looks to hide scratches and can look good painted body color, with chrome or even black.
Now the blacked out look needs to die, especially wheels. My biggest gripe is it seems GMC made the Canyon SLE (or elevation package) standard with the black wheels. Minivans even have them now.
Silver is excellent at hiding dirt. If you want something dark, a dark grey works almost as well at hiding dirt.