Here’s Why The Most Popular Car Colors Are Also The Dullest

What, one might ask, is the point of automakers offering a full palette of paint treatments when the vast majority of car buyers simply choose what are essentially non-colors. Most of the cars, trucks, and SUVs on the road are as monochromatic as a 1950’s television program, with an estimated 25.8 percent of all vehicles on the road being painted white. That’s according to a review of over 6.1 million in-use models conducted by the online marketplace iSeeCars.com.

Black, which is essentially the combination of all colors, comes in second to counterbalance white, which is defined as the absence of color. Along with gray and silver, these dullsville treatments can be found adorning more than 78 percent of all rides on the road, with the most popular colors in all 50 states and each of the nation’s major metropolitan areas being either white or black.

We’ve certainly come a long way from the muscle car and roadster eras when brightly colored rides helped what were already expressive vehicles further stand out in a sea of sedate sedans and station wagons. If anything we’ve come back to the days of Henry Ford’s original Model T, which, as the saying went, one could have in any color so long as it was black.

So how did the nation’s color selections get to be so bland? Is the idea not to stand out to attract thieves or potential carjackers? Or is it a simple lack of creativity on the part of car buyers, with automakers and dealerships more or less following the prevailing preferences?

“White’s popularity can be attributed to it being one of the easiest colors to maintain, and because it is a common color for fleet and rental vehicles, white is prevalent in the used car market,” explains Karl Brauer, Executive Analyst for iSeeCars. “Black remains a popular choice for car buyers, [while] consumers may prefer gray and silver because they are practical colors, yet are slightly more novel than white and black.”

These are the 10 most popular car colors in the U.S., according to iSeeCars.com, with the applicable percentages of the nation’s fleet for each noted:

1. White: 25.8%
2. Black: 22.3%
3. Gray: 18.4%
4. Silver: 12.1%
5. Blue: 9.5%
6. Red: 8.6%
7. Brown: 0.9%
8. Green: 0.8%
9. Orange: 0.6%
10. Beige: 0.5%

Full data sets can be found here.

And yet, an earlier iSeeCars.com study of over 650,000 used car transactions determined that more brightly-colored vehicles tend to bring the greatest financial returns at trade-in time.

While the hue-less choices that rule the roads tend to, appropriately enough, remain neutral with regard to resale value, the report concluded that vehicles painted yellow are no lemons when it comes to bringing back the bucks. All else being equal, yellow cars were found to depreciate an average of just 4.5 percent over a three-year ownership period. That’s 70 percent less than the average vehicle painted in a far more neutral tone.

“Yellow is among the least popular car colors with the lowest vehicle share and is commonly a color for sports cars and other low-volume vehicles that hold their value relatively well,” Brauer says. “Because yellow vehicles are so novel in the secondhand marketplace, people are willing to pay a premium for them.”

Here’s which colors the website says help contribute to the lowest rates of depreciation, based on a three-year ownership period:

1. Yellow: 4.5%
2. Orange: 10.7%
3. Purple: 13.9%
4. Red: 14.0%
5. Green: 14.0%
6. Blue: 14.3%
7. Gray: 14.3%
8. Beige: 14.4%
9. Silver 14.8%
10. White: 15.5%

Average: 15.0%. You can find this report here.