For a second consecutive year, white is the most popular color for new cars, according to the 2012 DuPont Automotive Color Popularity Report. Black, silver, gray and red round out the top five.
“White especially has been a constant top runner since really 1998,” says Nancy Lockhart, DuPont color marketing manager. “Silver had its reign from 2001 to 2006 as being the leading color and now black has come up as being the leading color in certain segments, especially luxury.”
Both black and white are seen as denoting status, luxury and quality, in world full of colors.
Trends in the electronics industry had a big impact on car colors over the past decade. For example, silver became the color of choice for cell phones, computers and home entertainment systems in the early to mid-2000s. Consequently, it also became a prominent car color. “It was a color that said, ‘Look, I have a modern piece of technology,
Then, in the mid-2000s and beyond, Apple made a splash with white iBooks, iMacs, iPhones and iPods and helped establish white as a hip color of status. Thus, Apple inadvertently helped propel white to prominence in the auto industry.
But it’s not just electronics that have an impact on car colors. The use of browns and beiges in home decor is influencing automakers too . These earthy tones rank as seventh on the list of most popular car colors this year. They account for 5 percent of the automotive market, both globally and in North America.
Green is also having a resurgence lately, but still only accounts for 1 percent of the world automotive market and 2 percent in the United States. It ranks ninth in popularity.
“Those colors that may be lower popularity, they get the most recognition . “More people notice them because all of these neutral colors kind of pass them by—white, black, silver, gray. They kind of go unnoticed now. And some of these lower popularity colors are getting more news.”
Still, white, silver, gray and black vehicles vastly outnumber cars of other colors, not just in the United States, but the world over. Collectively, they account for 76 percent of the automotive market. But that could change.
“It’s a trend I think people are getting a little tired of, because we’ve had so many of these neutral colors on the road
Benltey offers a vivid hue on its Continental GT Speed called Apple Green. Click the photo to see more new cars in the top 10 most popular colors. (Credit: Bentley)
At least they’re getting more interesting with advances in paint technology that allow manufacturers to use multiple layers to create shimmery silvers, three-dimensional blacks and pearly whites.“Colors were more flat 20 or 30 years ago,” Lockhart says. “So we now have a lot more what we call ‘travel,’ where a color looks very bright from one angle and dark from another.”
This trend is starting to spread from neutral tones to bright colors, like yellow and gold. Using white primer as a base underneath the paint to make hues of all kinds brighter is another trend on the rise.
DuPont puts together a palette of new colors and presents them to car designers every year at a show for them to mull over and consider incorporating into their lineups. This gives the company insight into what colors consumers will see more of in the future, and Lockhart shared some of the changes that are brewing.
“Typically, it takes anywhere from two to four years for a color to be developed and processed. So we really have to think far in advance in order to get these colors into the designers’ hands so they have time to be developed and made for production,” Lockhart says.
One area of interest for the auto industry is trying to reinterpret colors associated with fuel-efficient vehicles. The intent is to freshen up the colors, but still connote the idea of being “green.”
“When you look at hybrid vehicles at auto shows, you see a lot of bright whites, you see a lot of light blue and maybe some light greens. So we tried to take this a step further and modernize this color group,” Lockhart says. DuPont came up with muted metallic hues that have hints of blue and other cool tones. The new colors also contain varying degrees of metallic flakes.
For the luxury segment, DuPont developed a bold bronze and jewel-like green, the latter of which happens to be similar to the emerald color that Pantone, another paint company, recently unveiled as its color of the year for 2013. Unlike DuPont, which focuses on the auto industry, Pantone focuses primarily on the fashion and home decor industries, where its color of the year is seen as a trendsetter.
The rankings in DuPont’s Automotive Color Popularity Report are based on production numbers from the automakers. In other words, the number of vehicles manufactured in each color for the 2012 model year determines where on the list that color turns up. Prior to white’s two-year streak in the top spot, silver had been the most popular color for 2010.
DuPont announced earlier this year that it will sell its Performance Coatings division to alternative asset manager The Carlyle Group for $4.9 billion in cash. After the sale, expected to close in the first quarter of 2013, Performance Coatings will still develop colors and paint for cars. DuPont will be out of that business, but will continue to develop technologically advanced products for the automotive industry, focusing on lightweight materials, environmentally friendly refrigerants, bio-based seat fabrics, and biofuels.
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