Having never purchased a new car myself, I’m curious about this. Do paint jobs in colors other than white or black cost more, when buying a new car? If not, why is boring ol’ white such a damned popular car color?
The other day at work, I happened to look out the window at the parking lot. Out of maybe 100 cars in the lot, the overwhelming majority of them were white, followed by black, several cars in various shades of silver, five cars in various shades of red, and then a grand total of three vehicles of any other color.
I just looked out the window of my apartment, at the major street I live on, and watched six consecutive white cars drive past.
A few years ago, on this same street, I snapped a photo of the smoke from nearby fires filling the air, and the random selection of vehicles passing by and parked nearby were almost all white.
These aren’t fleet vehicles, they’re just regular passenger cars and trucks.
Interesting. I would have guessed silver or gray were the most popular. White is the most popular single color, it seems, but silver + gray , if taken together, is higher. (And I"m not exactly clear where silver ends and gray begins, to be honest.) Right now, looking out my window, I see 10 cars. 2 white and 8 either silver or gray.
Both times I bought a car recently, colors had same list price, but I got more off on the deal by choosing the least popular color on that particular lot. In one case, black was least popular, in the other case, gray/silver. For at least one of them, the white model was more in demand.
Neutral colors, such as white and gray/silver, are most popular, but I’m not sure there’s a definitive, General Questions answer as to why. Some possible answers given here and here include
“black and white are seen as denoting status, luxury and quality”
“Trends in the electronics industry had a big impact on car colors” (colors of cars tend to follow colors of home electronics)
“Conventional wisdom has long considered neutral colours to be more tasteful, timeless, flattering, and fool-proof than bright colours”
“silver is the most popular colour for the simple reason that relatively more light reflects off it, hiding dirt and attractively accentuating the architectural design. Cars that are silver retain their value better than any other colour”
It can go both ways and it depends on the model as well as the fashion at the time. Except for optional premium paints, it costs about the same to paint a vehicle any color so the difference is mainly a function of supply and demand. Sometimes the auto makers and dealers estimate those incorrectly.
I never liked white vehicles that much myself but my father got a Lexus SUV and insisted on white and was even willing to wait for it over other colors. I didn’t understand why until I saw it. It really was pretty and much more classy than the black and red versions.
OTOH, my ex-FIL got a great deal on a new BMW 750il because it would’t sell for almost two years because of the color. It wasn’t ugly at all but it was a reddish-macaroon color that nobody else wanted on a luxury car that expensive. Those are like personal limos and most people that get one want black or dark blue. The dealer just finally had to get rid of it to clear room and money for other inventory. It was a great luxury vehicle. It just happened to be the wrong color for most potential buyers.
IME, car manufacturers will often charge a premium for certain types of paint (e.g., pearlescent and metallic finishes) or certain colors (often red). When I bought my Mustang a few years ago, its color (Candy Red Metallic) was among the most expensive color options, probably a couple of hundred dollars more expensive than a more basic color.
So, it’s not (AFAIK) that you get a discount for a white (or black, or gray) car, so much as that you might pay a premium for a more exotic color, at least when it comes to list price. If a dealer is having trouble moving a certain color off of their lot, they might well offer a discount to take a car of that color off of their hands…
Back in the olden days, 50’s to mid 70’s. two and three tone cars cost more, maybe a $100 or so. Vinyl roofs pretty much ended the two-tone, aka, tutone.
Regular old black was extra cost on some 70’s cars.
all cars are now painted in a “basecoat/clearcoat” manner. meaning, the base (color) coat goes on first, and is not glossy. it might be just one step above completely matte. Then the clearcoat is sprayed on top of that which gives the finish its gloss and makes pearl and metallic colors “pop.”
the “premium” (i.e. extra cost) paints are typically either something with novel and expensive fillers (like the color-shifting “mystic” paints that were popular for like 10 seconds in the '90s) or “tri-coat” finishes where there’s a base coat (usually pearlescent,) a tint coat, then a clear.
Mmmm. Singed cocoanut is my favorite color for classy cars.
What’s amazing to me about car colors is how much this has changed over the years. In the late 60s & 70s, nobody wanted a white or silver car. Tan / beige was for your great aunt Sarah. Cars were vivid deep greens, blues, red, yellows and oranges.
My semi-informed recollection is that when the first pollution controls came in on paint ingredients in the mid-late 70s, the resulting reformulated paints sucked. The darker the color, the sooner it “sunburned” and needed to be repainted. Suddenly customers were flocking to beige, silver, & white because those were the only colors that’d last longer than ~3 years before the paint failed and you either repainted or rusted out.
Today they can make fully durable vivid colors. But the demand isn’t there. Even many “sporty” models offer only 2 gray/silvers, 2 tans, 2 whites, and a not-very-vivid red.
No real cite, but I read or heard that because out-of-the-ordinary colors make a car harder to resell, the overall palette has been reduced. You might love orange, but few people do, so you’ll get less when you sell it (or trade it in).
White is the color that hides dust and dirt the best. Black is the worst.
Color of the car body doesn’t have a significant impact on how hot the inside gets in the sun, but the color of the interior and seating surfaces will. A car with a black interior will get hotter faster.
White certainly doesn’t hide dirt the best, black is the worst followed by white. I’ve owned a lot of white vehicles and I’ve spent a lot of time washing them.
Each manufacturer has a half dozen or so base colors. Every manufacturer has white as a base color. All base colors cost the same.
Manufacturers will then have premium colors. There are usually less premium options than base ones. These are a upgrade that costs around 1k but might only be available with specific packages.
After that you get into custom colors, this is pretty much anything you can imagine, the manufacturer may not offer these directly often they paint job gets done by a third party.
One of the driving reasons more white vehicles are produced is fleet sales. Companies, particular those that letter their vehicles prefer white.
Often two colors at the same time, in the famously gauche two-tone treatment of the day! And of course glaring all-white sidewall tires and gaudy chrome and paraphernalia sticking out all over the place, including (during the height of tailfin madness) fins that made it look ready for takeoff, to return home to the Planet of Bad Taste! [ETA: Some of that pertains to the late 50s and early 60s, admittedly!]
As for color, I remember reading somewhere that white is currently the most popular car color. I don’t remember the order of the other colors, except that among normal primary colors the least popular was green.
I don’t know what the explanation is, but to my eye, on most cars white has always looked good, especially bigger vehicles like minivans and SUVs. It’s certainly not about cost – the cost is generally the same unless some unpopular color in stock is being discounted, although white is sometimes one of the special finishes that commands a small premium. I remember many decades ago, before color trends changed, reading a review of some hot new sports car, and the writer commented that the car attracted lots of attention “even painted refrigerator white”, which struck me as a really odd thing to say even back then. There were pictures of it and to me, it looked beautiful in white.
I see we have competing views on whether white hides the dirt best or not … maybe it depends on the color of the local dust … because around here white cars always look cleaner than any other color … I had grey, blue, orange, brown, green … my lil’ white rig seemed to be needing to be washed less … noticeably less …
Yeah, Black color car price is too much rather than White. I love black one but I bought white car. My old brand is Axio, X Corola. I am thinking, I need a brand new car that will be black color.
The Wikipedia article that Thudlow Boink referred to (in post #6) also shows the breakdown of car color in North America. The two major suppliers of automotive paint (PPG and Dupont) do their own surveys on it, but get similar results:
White is #1
Black is #2
Silver and gray are #3 and #4, but if you put those two together, they’re bigger than white
Those four colors account for about 75% of new cars
After those, in descending order, are red, blue, brown, green, and “other”.
[ETA: Some of that pertains to the late 50s and early 60s, admittedly!]