The Most Popular Car Colors in the U.S.

When you drive down the street, you may notice that the majority of vehicles tend to be painted just a handful of colors. That’s no coincidence — some colors are simply more desirable to the average consumer. But the most popular colors have changed over the last 30 years. 

According to a study of 22 million used vehicles from iSeeCars — a data-driven analytics firm that focuses on new and used car sales — three colors now make up a lion’s share of vehicles on the road. Let’s look at the findings.

White

According to iSeeCars, white tops the list of popular car colors today, just as it did in the ’90s. White cars comprise 25.7% of the modern market share — a notable uptick from 22.1% in 1996. There was a brief period in the mid-aughts when white dipped to second and then third, but the color retook the top spot by the mid-2010s. When broken down into categories, white is the most popular color for trucks (33.6%) and SUVs (25.1%), and third among passenger cars (21.2%) and sports cars (16.6%).

Black

Black-colored vehicles are the second-most popular cars being listed and bought today, making up 23.4% of the overall market. That’s a 64.5% increase from 1996, when the color held just 14.2% of the market. It was in the top spot for several years in the late aughts and early 2010s, though. Today, black ranks as the second-most popular color in every category: trucks (23.4%), SUVs (23.4%), passenger vehicles (23.7%), and sports cars (20.9%).

Gray

Back in 1996, gray-colored cars made up just 3.6% of the overall market share. But over the last 30 years they’ve experienced a 528.4% rise in popularity, and they now rank third at 22.9%. Gray is the third-most popular color for trucks (19.2%) and SUVs (21.9%), and ranks first among passenger cars (28.4%) and sports cars (21.2%).

Blue

The fourth-most popular car color is blue, though the hue has experienced a decline in popularity over the past three decades. Blue cars comprised 10.2% of the total market share in 1996 but make up only 9.1% today. Blue is the sixth-most popular color for trucks at 6.3%, and ranks fourth among SUVs (9.5%), passenger vehicles (9.9%), and sports cars (15.5%).

Silver

Silver is the fourth and final grayscale color to crack the top five in the study. Along with the other grayscale colors (white, black, and gray), they combine for 80.4% of the overall market share, compared to just 47.3% in 1996. On its own, silver is found in 8.4% of cars now. It also ranks fifth for trucks (7.3%), SUVs (8.9%), and passenger cars (7.4%), and it ranks sixth among sports cars (4.9%).

Red

Thirty years ago, red was the second-most popular car color at 20.1% of the overall market share — a mere two percentage points below white. But today, red has fallen all the way down to sixth, comprising only 7% of used cars being listed and sold. Red remains slightly more popular among truck buyers, ranking fourth at 7.6%. It ranks fifth for sports cars at 10.8%, and is in the sixth spot for both SUVs (6.8%) and passenger cars (7.1%).

Green

Much like red cars, green cars have plummeted in popularity, going from 13.4% of the total market in 1996 to just 2.2% today. Green also ranks seventh in each category: trucks (1%), SUVs (2.9%), passenger cars (1%), and sports cars (4.5%).

The Other Colors

According to iSeeCars, brown, orange, beige, yellow, gold, and purple round out the top 13, though all of those sit below 1% in terms of popularity. Orange is the only one of those six colors to see a rise since 1996, going from 0.2% to 0.3% today. The least popular colors are purple and gold, which both have 0% of the market share today, down from 0.7% and 2.3% in 1996, respectively.

Statistics go to show that flashier colors are a thing of the past — they’ve dropped more than 62% in market share since 1996. Today’s drivers prefer grayscale colors by a mile.

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