BASF Coatings Releases 2025-2026 Automotive Color Trends
BASF Coatings released the 2025-2026 edition of its Automotive Color Trends collection, “DRIVING THE PROXY,” positioning color as a bridge between inspiration and production decisions for future vehicle programs. The palette emphasizes refined faux solids with smooth surfaces and subtle sparkle, alongside a clear shift toward warmer, emotionally resonant hues such as reddish tones, mauves and nuanced browns. Several colors incorporate renewable or recycled raw materials. Others employ innovations like multi-color pigments and liquid metal-like surfaces to add visual depth.
Automotive OEMs use these insights to inform longer-range styling and manufacturing plans, with select shades expected to move into production within two years. Among the 45 concepts, BASF Coatings’ design team identified three regional key colors that reflect cultural and technological dynamics:
EMEA — TESSERACT BLUE
A vivid blue with green and violet highlights created through advanced interference pigments. The shade takes cues from geometric abstraction to deliver a multidimensional surface and visual depth.
“We see that overlapping dynamics, such as climate changes and social fragmentation, are creating visible and symbolic voids and reshaping social norms,” said Mark Gutjahr, Global Head of Automotive Color Design at BASF Coatings. “In this context, TESSERACT BLUE represents a change in perspective – what we call ‘filling the voids’. It offers a harmonious vision for automotive surfaces with inclusive, forward-looking solutions.”
Asia Pacific — PHYGITAL MAGNETAR
A warm, fluid metallic with bright white highlights that balances rapid innovation with a desire for calm. Using two-coat technology, the color creates a smooth, liquid-metal effect intended to merge physical and digital sensibilities.
“We were inspired by ongoing conversations around ‘innovation fatigue’ in the Asia Pacific region,” said Chiharu Matsuhara, Head of Automotive Color Design for Asia Pacific at BASF Coatings. “With its calm, expressive surface, PHYGITAL MAGNETAR creates a space where innovation becomes invisible, and design quietly redefines the future.”
Americas — AUXETIC NEUTRAL
A rich brown that reframes neutrality as an identity statement. Clean sparkle elements add tactility and dimensionality, drawing from fashion and industrial design references.
“Design today is less about individual authorship and more about collective expression,” said Gutjahr. “Neutrality — and even ‘anonymous authorship’ — have become tools for inclusivity, allowing diverse voices to coexist and shape identity. AUXETIC NEUTRAL reflects the desired qualities to navigate through this period, being a color that embraces complexity, openness, while remaining distinct and memorable.”
Each year, BASF Coatings’ global design network analyzes trends in fashion, consumer behavior, technology and nature to inform the collection and support OEM decision-making with both digital and virtual color tools. Prior concepts, including Bursting Blue, have moved from trend signal to widely adopted road color.
Learn more about how color and materials innovation shape finishes in Automotive Coatings
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