The Most Popular Car Colors for 2023 Are Boring at Best
What’s your favorite car color? Is it yellow, blue, or green? If so, you’re among the minority, according to a recent study from iSeeCars. The automotive research site analyzed over 10 million one to five-year-old cars sold from 2018 to 2023 to find the most popular car color choices. The results aren’t too surprising and are boring at best.
The grayscale colors rule them all
You may think that five years can make a difference in statistics, but regarding car colors, history repeats itself. The iSeeCars study shows that white, black, gray, and silver (also known as the grayscale colors) remain the most popular colors in 2023, as they did in 2018.
The results show that 77.2% of one to five-year-old cars in 2018 were one of the grayscale colors, growing to 78.9% in 2023. Among those four colors, gray gained 4% since 2018, and silver dropped by 3.4%.
Karl Brauer, the executive analyst for iSeeCars, commented on the results: “While white, black, gray, and silver remain the dominant colors, it’s interesting to see how far silver has fallen. Silver is now just two percentage points above blue, which has displaced red as the fifth most popular color.”
Check out the results of the study below:
The more colorful options, like orange, beige, purple, yellow, and gold, only made up for about 1.5% of the market combined. Blue and red stayed in the middle of the pack, making up 9.7 and 8.2%, respectively.
The popularity of boring colors extends across all vehicle body styles
The aforementioned data covered every car found from 2018 to 2023. However, when the data was broken down to specific body styles, the most popular color choices were no more vibrant. The iSeeCars study showed that black and white were the most popular color choices for every body style in 2023.
That statistic has not changed much from 2018, when white and black were also prevalent. But black was the more popular color choice for sedans, SUVs, and convertibles back then.
As for non-grayscale colors, red and blue were the most popular choices across the board in 2023. Unsurprisingly, many coupe and convertible owners chose red, while many sedan and SUV owners went with a blue hue.
This starkly contrasts with 2018, when most vehicle owners across the board favored red over blue – except for minivan owners.
The most colorful states favored black and white as well
Black and white cars were consistently the most popular across all 50 states. However, the top three most colorful states were Alaska, with 27.3% of its cars being colorful; West Virginia, with 26.9%, and Vermont, rounded out the top three, with 25.8% of its cars falling in the colorful end of the spectrum.
Speaking of spectrums, California and Hawaii are at the bottom of the list, with only 16.7% and 16.3% colorful cars, respectively. That’s surprising, considering those states are most well-known for being diverse culturally.
Will this data change over time as automakers change their color palettes? We don’t think so, considering history tends to repeat itself – even when it comes to car colors.
