Have you recently tried picking a color for your new car from the ever-increasing palette on offer from car manufacturers?

If so, have you stuck with a default choice, such as silver or black, or did you go for something a bit more extravagant?

According to the annual PPG Industries color survey, white, black, grey and silver still top buyers’ choices but the newest trend gaining ground is that of “natural” colors, i.e. golds, beiges, yellows, oranges and browns.

“A color range that we call natural, the oranges, browns and golds, are growing on all regions, but particularly in Europe, which is interesting”, PPG manager for color styling on automotive OEM coatings Jane Harrington told Wards Auto. “We’ll start to see that growth in the next year or so.”

In Europe, natural colors accounted for 12 percent, while they were a bit less popular in North America, where they accounted for 10 percent of new cars sold.

Globally, white rules supreme, with 28 percent opting for it (up 3 percent from 2013) and black, grey and silver follow with 13 percent each. It’s worth noting, though, that silver’s popularity has declined in the last couple of years by 7 percent.

“Part of that decline is a lot of color palettes for car lines offer silver and grey, and we’re seeing a division there even between the two colors”, said Harrington. Color choices are not spread equally across segments; on the contrary, the latter plays a great role in color popularity.

In the luxury class, for example, the segment is “pretty well divided between black and white, with grey second” as in this class vehicles “usually have a limited palette”, according to Harrington. Compact cars are mostly painted in different shades of blue, green and red, trucks and SUVs are mostly white but black metallic and solids are also strong, and sports cars are much more likely to come in red, blue or green than grey or silver.

Oddball choices are limited. For example, matte finish requires extra care, particularly when being washed, and two-tone paint schemes only work on certain shapes such as the Mini or the Fiat 500.

Harrington says that fashion and architecture have a lot to do with color popularity on vehicles and thus, automotive designers study those two trends closely when picking up the colors for their next model.

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