Color Us Boring: Most Cars Sold Today Are Grayscale

Have you heard about how birds are more likely to target dark-colored cars with their, well, aerial gifts?

That got us curious about what colors of cars people are selecting in different areas, and to be clear, this is not “for the birds.”

A while back, the website iSeeCars.com put out a report on car sales by color (this was in 2023)… and they found that white is more popular than ever.  28% of cars sold nationwide are white, which is up from 16% in the mid-2000s.

Black is the second-most popular, followed by gray and silver.  If you add up the percentages for those colors, 80% of the cars sold are grayscale… like you are watching a black-and-white movie.

The state with the most car-color diversity is West Virginia, where 28% of the cars are colorful.  The state with the least diversity is California, where only 17% of the cars are colorful.

If you exclude grayscale “colors,” every state’s top color is either blue or red.

Outside of that, 2% of the cars sold across the country are green… and all the remaining colors account for less than 1% of car sales each.  But if you’re curious, here’s the order:

Orange is the eighth-most popular car color, followed by beige… brown… yellow… gold… and purple.

Experts say that white is popular because it’s “one of the easiest colors to maintain, and because it is a common color for fleet and rental vehicles.” 

That leads to white used cars being very common.

But there’s good news for people who are brave enough to buy a bold color:  Less popular colors tend to depreciate less, because they are scarce in the used car marketplace.