Car Color Analysis:  Cars Are Half As Colorful As They Used To Be

Fewer and fewer colors are dotting the roadways these days, as grayscale colors take over the nation's roads.  Grayscale hues being white, black, gray and silver. According to a new iSeeCars study, grayscale colors made up 80 percent of cars in 2023 compared to 60.3 percent in 2004.  So that leaves just 20 percent for non-grayscale colors in terms of market share.

Here are some of the study's highlights:

• Gray gained the most market share since 2004, up 81.9 percent; followed by white gaining 77.4 percent; silver was the biggest grayscale loser, down 52.2 percent
• Every other color lost share, with the biggest losers being gold (-96.8 percent), purple (-92.7 percent), brown (-86.5 percent), beige (-85.3 percent) and yellow (-75.7 percent)
• This drop in diversity comes despite nearly the same number of colors being offered in 2023 versus 2004 – with an average of 6.7 colors per model today compared to 7.1 colors per model 20 years ago
• Green is the only non-grayscale color to increase share in recent years, with a small improvement since 2020

Over the past twenty years,  among the dominant grayscale shades, gray made the biggest move up, gaining 81.9 percent. Silver dropped 52.2 percent in popularity.

Here were 2023's top 5 car colors, with the difference in market share compared to 2004.

iSeeCars says it analyzed the colors of over 20 million used cars from model years 2004 - 2023 sold from January 2023 to April 2024. The share of each color within each model year was calculated, as was the difference in share between model years 2004 and 2023.

To see the entire report, including color trends, and percentages of particular colors, click here.