Have you ever wondered how colour changes your car’s value? It’s a more complex question than you might expect, and involves a big conversation about market trends. If you’re interested though this article will tell you all you need to know about the best colour options for your next car.
Why Colour Matters
It might seem odd at first that colour changes your car’s value at all since the colour of the car has no practical effect on how the car runs or how fuel efficient it is, it’s not a technical quality of the car and you spend most of your time inside the car anyway.
Well, us humans are not perfectly rational creatures, reaction to colour is a purely emotional response, and colours can have a large effect on us. When we’re happy we gravitate towards bright colours like yellow and orange, and when we’re sad we gravitate towards dark colours like blue and green, the same is true of cars.
Colour is also a key part of self expression, just because you don’t see the colour of the car very much while driving, doesn’t mean other people don’t see it. Are you looking to blend in with the crowd in black or white? Or are you looking to make a statement in hot pink?
Now theoretically people can buy a car in a colour they don’t like and paint it later, but that’s an added cost they’re going to factor into the asking price, and in reality most people won’t bother. When buying a new car, they’re also looking for the right colour.
The Effect of Colour
There’s 2 ways to look at this and different sources will tell you different things. Let’s go through both. The first way is to look at the statistics which show that the most popular colours are the neutral tones. According to a study by Axalta in 2015 the most popular colour for cars is white at 35% followed by black at 19% then silver and grey coming in at 3rd and 4th.
The logic here then is that these are the colours that the majority of people want, and therefore if you’re looking to sell a car, this is the colour you should be after.
However, the other way of looking at it is depreciation value. A study by iseecars found that Yellow, and other more bold colours have a lower depreciation value after 3 years than the more popular colours like blakc and white.
The logic then is that you should get a car in one of these bolder colours to secure it’s better depreciating value, Therefore yellow is the best colour for a car financially! However, the study also finds that this value is highly dependent on the type of car, for example black is much better for coupe’s then on any other type in the study.
How to Make Sense of This
These two readings seem contradictory, which unfortunately happens a lot with financing, but there is a logic to it when you examine the reasons behind it.
Think of it this way, it’s easier to sell a white car because more people want white, but that also means there’s more people selling white cars, and more competition. It’s harder to sell a yellow car because less people want yellow. So there’s less yellow cars and the people who want yellow cars are willing to pay more for them.
When it really comes down to it, there is no best colour for a car. It’s such a miniscule difference so just pick whatever you like the most!