Study

Study: Grayscale cars get even more popular — particularly, well, gray

Blue sees the biggest gain among the minority of cars that are actual colors

Oct 3rd 2023 at 11:53AM

ISeeCars.com has published its latest survey of the most popular car colors on the market. It looked at the sales of more than 10 million used cars ranging from 1- to 5-years-old. And as has been the case, non-colors, or more specifically, grayscale paints (white, black, gray and silver), continue to be the most popular. In fact, compared to five years ago, they gained 1.7% of the market to reach 78.9% in total. The most popular of them is white. It saw some of the biggest gains over five years ago, just shy of gray, which saw an increase in popularity by 4%. Some of gray's gains may be due to a slump in silver, down 3.4%.

The most popular actual color was blue, picking up 1.2% and edging past red.

You can see the list of most popular colors below, their the percentage of sales, and how they're trending:

  1. White, 26.2% (+2.9% in the past five years)
  2. Black, 21.8% (-1.8%)
  3. Gray, 19.2% (+4%)
  4. Silver, 11.7% (-3,4%)
  5. Blue, 9.7% (+1.2%)
  6. Red, 8.2% (-2.4%)
  7. Green, 1.0% (+0.2%)
  8. Brown, 0.8% (-0.9%)
  9. Orange, 0.6% (+0.3%)
  10. Beige, 0.4% (+0.1%)
  11. Purple, 0.2% (+0.1%)
  12. Gold, 0.2% (-0.1%)
  13. Yellow, 0.1% (-0.1%)

The ISeeCars.com study had some other interesting insights, too. The states with the highest number of non-grayscale sales were Alaska, West Virginia and Vermont. The other end of the spectrum (wordplay definitely intended) were Hawaii, California and Louisiana. The organization speculated large rental and fleet sales in those latter states may contribute to high numbers of conservative colors. White also was the most popular color in those states, and we wouldn't be surprised if high temperatures and lots of sun contributed to that (white reflects more light).

Also, while they aren't the most popular, real colors can translate into higher value. The colors with the highest average prices were yellow, followed by green and beige. White and black then come right after. Those three high-priced colors, according to ISeeCars.com, have fairly high prices simply due to a scarcity of them on the market for people who want them. Interestingly, beige saw the biggest increase in price compared to five years ago, which the organization credits to overall car prices increasing, as well as some high-end pickup trucks being offered in the color.

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