Selecting a car color is a personal preference. Still, car buyers should be mindful their choice might cause their vehicle to depreciate more than another color when they resell.
The color of the car you choose can also affect your safety and how easy it is to keep it looking clean. Read on to learn which colors provide the best car resale value and the worst color car to buy.
To get to the worst vehicle colors when you sell your car, we’ll uncover the following issues surrounding color-related depreciation:
- Do Vehicle Colors Affect Resale Value?
- Which Car Colors to Avoid?
- Do Common Colors Resell Well?
- Car Colors and their Average Depreciation Value
- Which Car Colors are More Prone to Accidents?
- What Car Colors are Hardest to Keep Clean?
Do Vehicle Colors Affect Resale Value?
A vehicle’s color is its most noticeable feature. Not surprisingly, car color is among the primary considerations following make and model when shopping for a new ride.
It might be surprising that mainstream colors such as black, white, and silver have broad appeal because buyers assume other buyers prefer them. While those three shades win the car color popularity contest, vehicles sporting more obscure colors like the 2021 and 2022 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon 4XE in Tuscadero Pink sometimes offer better car resale value than those with standard paint colors.
If you plan to resell your car, its color may be an essential factor to consider.
Which Car Colors to Avoid?
PPG Industries is one of the leading suppliers of paints and coatings to the global auto industry. The company produces detailed reports on color popularity every year. Read them regularly, and you’ll notice patterns. Greyscale colors are consistently in demand year after year. Reds and blues are often safe bets. Colors outside that range are rarely popular. Supply and demand principles govern the used car marketplace.
With that in mind, you’ll want to avoid some hues unless they appeal to you personally so much that you don’t mind the depreciation hit. Among all the cars produced in 2021, the least popular car colors were:
- Green: found on 2% of cars
- Natural/Brown/Beige: found on 1.5% of cars
- Purple, Two-Tone, Other: found on 1% of cars
Do Common Colors Resell Well?
Car color is just one of many attributes that buyers must consider. The worst car color might not matter as much when it’s on an otherwise desirable model with plenty of other features buyers seek. And remember, some colors work well with specific models but not others. A sports car with flashy green paint might look fantastic, while a minivan in the same color might not be as attractive.
The most common colors of automobiles rank in the middle of vehicle depreciation surveys by color. Because there are so many silver, white, and black cars on the market, potential buyers have more cars from which to choose.
- Silver/Gray: found on 34% of cars.
- White: found on 24% of cars.
- Black: found on 18% of cars.
Paint supplier BASF’s 2020-2021 Automotive Color Trends report predicts these colors will be increasingly popular between 2023 to 2025:
- Dark Seltzer: This gray-like color signals the “new normal,” according to the trend report.
- Redolent Red: The trend report says the new color captures a “subtly muted reddish-brown color, pigmented by the forward-thinking functionality that new transportation demands.” Maybe reddish colors will be the new white.
- Abstraction Blue: Blue is rising in popularity, so it’s no surprise that this color will be in the minds of consumers.
Car Colors and Their Average Depreciation Value
Auto manufacturers produce more vehicles with grayscale and neutral exteriors. A smaller supply of bold-colored paint jobs helps create a greater demand and less depreciation.
A few relatively new, unusual-colored cars are available on the used market. A spokesperson from BASF tells us that purple, yellow, gold, and orange are the colors dealers are least likely to keep in stock. However, “people who buy these colors seem to keep their vehicles for a long time. It’s a smaller demographic that was probably more active in choosing that color, so they want to keep it for a longer time because they love it.”
Which Colors are More Prone to Accidents?
Statistically, color doesn’t affect car resale value too much. Today’s sellers can easily access nationwide auto sales listings and can market to buyers seeking a particular color they find attractive.
What drastically reduces a car’s value is damage, and statistics from Australia’s Monash University’s Accident Research Centre show an association between vehicle color and accident risk. In a white vehicle, you have a 12% lesser chance of accident involvement than a black vehicle in all types of weather and lighting.
Bottom line: Light-colored cars are easier to see on the road than dark-colored vehicles.
- Black has the highest crash risk (12%) relative to white
- Grey 11% higher risk
- Silver 10% higher risk
- Blue 7% higher risk
- Red 7% higher risk
What Colors are Hardest to Keep Clean?
Deciding the best car color or worst car color is a personal choice that depends on who makes the selection. For sure, some vehicles have worse colors than others at hiding imperfections such as scratches, dents, and dirt.
- Black: Sleek black looks amazing on almost any car. But the color is a double-edged sword. Black cars look best when fresh from the car wash. However, it will likely get covered with pollen, dirt, and dust in just a few minutes.
- Blue: This color is rising in popularity but is harder to keep clean. Blues tend to show water spots easily. Scratches and swirl marks also appear quickly with this color.
- Gray: This color is easiest to clean, according to various studies. Dirt and dust can hide nicely on these surfaces and look cleaner for longer.
- Green: Green cars are easy to keep looking cleaner longer. But the color shows imperfections easier than gray, silver, and white.
- Orange: This bright color not only commands attention but it’s easy to clean.
- Red: This flashy car color hides mud easier than other colors but becomes dull if dirty.
- Silver: Like gray, silver hides dust and dirt longer. They also tend to hide mud buildup near the rocker panels of cars.
- White: This color is also in the easy-to-care-for group. But white tends to show mud and splashes easier than gray and silver. However, it hides swirl marks from automatic car washes and tends to look newer, longer.
- Yellow: This car color stands out on roadways but hides dust and pollen. However, yellows emphasize mud splashes when you find yourself driving in the rain.
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