WILMINGTON, DE – Silver, black and white are the top colors in DuPont's ranking of worldwide vehicle color popularity. Now in its 57th year, the annual DuPont Global Automotive Color Popularity Report includes this year’s newly announced top global colors.
This year, silver ranked as the most popular color, with 25 percent. Black came in second with 23 percent, and white ranked third with 16 percent. Gray, blue and red ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, with 13 percent, nine percent and eight percent. Brown/beige received four percent and green and yellow/gold each received one percent.
In North America, white (17.8 percent) remains the top color choice with black (17 percent) and silver (16.7 percent) in second and third place. However, examining black’s popularity over time shows it is rising, up six percentage points from 2005, while silver and white have dropped in popularity by about two points over the past five years. Chroma colors blue and red remain solidly popular in the North American market, rising from 11 percent in 2006 to approximately 12 percent this year.
In Europe, black (27 percent) continues to gain popularity over silver (19.9 percent), which is continuing to decline. White is growing in popularity but remains a second-tier color with 10.2 percent of the market.
Japan saw a wide swing of color popularity for the year, ultimately aligning more with the North American and European markets. The color white remained the top color choice at 28 percent, dropping four points from 2008. Silver dropped five points to 23 percent, tied with black.
In the Chinese market, silver rose four points to 36 percent for the year to remain the top color, with black dropping eight points to 23 percent as the second most popular color. The market in India shows strong preference for silver (26.4 percent), white (23.4 percent), red (16.1 percent) and blue (10.9 percent) with the remaining colors each garnering six percent or less of the market. The Russian market looks similar to India with strong chroma colors mixed throughout the rankings, most noticeably in the green area. In the Russian rankings, silver was first (23.4 percent), followed by green (18.2 percent), black (16.7 percent), blue (15.5 percent) and red (10.8 percent).
PPG and The Paint Quality Institute have also issued reports on color trends. View both of these reports at www.pcimag.com in our Web Exclusives section.
