White will remain the most popular automotive paint color worldwide in 2020 as well, according to paint manufacturer Axalta in its Global Automotive Color Popularity Report. For ten years now, white has been the most chosen color for new cars. Gray rose in popularity, while silver gray and red turned out to be less popular in the past year. In Europe, the fork is slightly different.
A whopping 38 percent of cars produced worldwide this year are white, making it the most popular paint color by far. Black follows at some distance with 19 percent. These percentages are the same compared to 2019. However, gray caught up slightly with black this year: the share of the color increased from 13 percent to 15 percent. According to Axalta, this is mainly because silver gray is falling out of favor. This color has decreased in all regions. The paint manufacturer argues that this is because the public sees gray as a ‘more modern and luxurious’ color than silver gray. The popularity of red also declined, with 5 percent that share is one percent less than last year.
In Europe, however, the cards are shuffled differently than seen worldwide. Here gray is the most popular color for the first time thanks to an increase of 2 percent. White declined in popularity by the same percentage, especially with the compact cars and SUVs. In fact, both colors share the first place, as both black and white account for 25 percent of the total production here. Also striking: compared to the rest of the world, blue is a lot more popular in Europe. Here, 10 percent of all new cars were painted blue in the past year, while that share worldwide is 7 percent.