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The Year's Most Popular Car Colors Announced

WILMINGTON, DE - DuPont announced that silver, black and white are the top colors in its ranking of worldwide vehicle color popularity. Now in its 57th year, the annual DuPont Global Automotive Color Popularity Report is the original source for automotive color popularity. With detailed breakdowns for the top automotive markets, the report includes this year’s newly announced top global colors.

This year, silver ranked as the most popular color, with 25 percent. Black came in second with 23 percent, and white ranked third with 16 percent. Gray, blue and red ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, with 13 percent, nine percent and eight percent. Brown/beige received four percent and green and yellow/gold each received one percent.

“By gathering and analyzing color popularity data around the globe, DuPont is able to better identify trends and help our customers in the automotive industry develop color palettes for the future,” said Nancy Lockhart, Color Marketing Manager for DuPont OEM Performance Coatings. “The auto industry is an increasingly global business, so regional and global color data are vitally important to designers.”

Although the results suggest an ongoing convergence of color choice globally with color preferences becoming more homogeneous across regions, distinct regional differences remain. The top three colors, black, white and silver, continue to show strongly around the globe with growth of these colors across regions.

“It’s important to recognize that most people today, no matter where they live in the world, have access to cutting-edge information about popular colors from many sources like glossy magazines and fashionable websites and often will see the same widely distributed films,” said Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director, Pantone Color Institute and author of the blog Eisemancolorblog.com. “The top colors become ‘aspirational’ with a universal appeal.”

“There are still distinct regional differences in preference, but global trends are unmistakable,” said Lockhart. “Color preference can change from year to year because of a variety of factors including types of vehicles introduced, reduced vehicle size, consumer tastes and even the economy. These and other cultural, societal and demographic influences can shift regional trends over time.”

In North America, white (17.8 percent) remains the top color choice with black (17 percent) and silver (16.7 percent) in second and third place. However, examining black’s popularity over time shows it is rising, up six percentage points from 2005, while silver and white have dropped in popularity by about two points over the past five years. Chroma colors blue and red remain solidly popular in the North American market, rising from 11 percent in 2006 to approximately 12 percent this year.

In Europe, the top color black (27 percent) continues to gain popularity over silver (19.9 percent), which is continuing to decline. White is growing in popularity but remains a second-tier color with 10.2 percent of the market.

Japan saw a wide swing of color popularity for the year, ultimately aligning more with the North American and European markets. White remained the top color choice at 28 percent, dropping four points from 2008. Silver dropped five points to 23 percent, tied with black.

In contrast, the Chinese vehicle market experiences fluctuations in color preference. Silver rose four points to 36 percent for the year to remain the top color, with black dropping eight points to 23 percent as the second most popular color. As this market continues to grow, there will likely be less variation year to year.

The market in India shows strong preference for silver (26.4 percent), white (23.4 percent), red (16.1 percent) and blue (10.9 percent) with the remaining colors each garnering six percent or less of the market. Of interest, the Russian market looks similar to India with strong chroma colors mixed throughout the rankings, most noticeably in the green area. In the Russian rankings, silver was first (23.4 percent), followed by green (18.2 percent), black (16.7 percent), blue (15.5 percent) and red (10.8 percent).