Axalta releases 70th annual Global Automotive Colour Popularity Report
Silver, black, white and grey colours remain dominant colours but according to Axalta, this does not mean they’ve become any less vibrant.
According to Axalta’s colour report, 82 percent of all vehicles around the world are white, black, grey or silver. These aren’t your grandparents’ monotone white coats though—they often employ iridescent flakes, creating pearlescent effects that can result in significant variation within the same colour.
Specifically, pearlescent white shades compose 14 percent of all vehicles while solid white composes 20 percent of vehicles globally, with 34 percent of all cars being white. They elaborate that even though 21 percent of vehicles are coloured black while another 19 percent are gray, both colours have sparkling effects that can drastically impact the repainting and sourcing process beyond colour matching. “Today’s vehicles are more vibrant than ever,” said Robert Schnell, vice president of global sales at Axalta.
Notably, the one-in-three are white statistic is skewed by the inclusion of corporate fleet vehicles who may favour white paints for its simple, unoffensive look or standardizing logistics— it is representative of vehicles globally, not just consumer level vehicles.
“Together vehicles in white, black, gray, and silver add up to 82 percent of cars on the road today,” he said. Beyond the monochrome, North America continues to lead the world in the number of red vehicles at seven percent, while blue showed an increase to 11 percent. In South America, three percent of vehicles were beige, and most common on small and compact cars. One percent of vehicles were brown, and were predominantly trucks, SUVs and intermediate vehicles.
In Europe, gray remains the most popular colour at 27 percent. However, white saw a two percent decrease in popularity, down to 21 percent. Asia continues to have the highest number of white vehicles at 40 percent, despite the decline of popularity in white, ending at 43 percent. In Asia Pacific, the popularity of silver in India, Japan and South Korea continues to decline, at one percent decrease in each region.
