50 Shades of Grey...Cars: 2023's Car Color Trends Lack Chromatic Charm
by AutoExpert | 20 October, 2023
The automotive canvas of 2023 leans heavily towards the grayscale spectrum, leaving colorful hues in the rearview mirror. The revelation comes from a thorough study by iSeeCars, which dove into the color choices of car owners by analyzing over 10 million one to five-year-old cars sold from 2018 to 2023.
Monochrome Dominance
The study highlights an undeniable dominance of white, black, gray, and silver, painting a somewhat monotonous picture. Despite the span of five years, the color preferences among car owners remained unchanged, with a slight increase from 77.2% in 2018 to 78.9% in 2023 favoring the grayscale palette. Among these, gray vroomed ahead with a 4% increase since 2018, while silver lost some sheen, dropping by 3.4%.
Colorful Exceptions
While the grayscale colors sped ahead, colorful options like orange, beige, purple, yellow, and gold merely dotted the automotive landscape, making up just about 1.5% of the market combined. The mid-pack colors, blue and red, managed to capture 9.7% and 8.2% of the market respectively, with blue displacing red as a more popular choice in the non-grayscale spectrum.
Uniform Color Choices Across Body Styles
Dissecting the color preferences based on body styles revealed a uniform fondness for black and white across all vehicle categories in 2023. This color trend hardly shifted gears from 2018, with black being the color of choice for sedans, SUVs, and convertibles back then.
A Splash of Color Across States
Interestingly, when mapped across the U.S., Alaska, West Virginia, and Vermont emerged as the most colorful states, albeit still favoring black and white. In stark contrast, the culturally diverse states of California and Hawaii showed a surprising affinity for grayscale, with only 16.7% and 16.3% colorful cars respectively.
A Future in Grayscale or a Colorful Turnaround?
This grayscale dominance sparks a ponder on whether the automotive color trends will ever shift to a more vibrant spectrum, or if the monochrome preference is here to stay. With history as a testimony, a colorful automotive revolution seems like a distant dream.
