Few things in life are as black and white as the most popular car color.
That’s according to a new study from iSeeCars, which examined more than 6.1 million used vehicles, from the 2017-2021 model years, which were sold between January and August this year.
The findings aren’t exactly shocking, as white was the most popular color at 25.8%. It was closely followed by its dark counterpart as black had a 22.3%. Rounding of the top four spots were gray (18.4%) and silver (12.1%).
All told, vehicles in shades of gray – white, black, gray and silver – accounted for 78.5% of the vehicles in the study. The only popular ‘colorful’ shades were blue (9.5%) and red (8.6%), as brown, green, beige, orange, gold, yellow and purple made up only 3.3%.
Interestingly, the popularity of grayscale colors has increased from 2017 to 2022. However, the change is relatively small as the percentage of grayscale models has only increased from 76.2% to 78.6%.
Aside from the results at the national level, white was the preferred color in 36 states. Black was only more popular in 14 states, including Michigan, New York, Wisconsin and Illinois.
So which state is the most ‘colorful’? That honor goes to West Virginia, where 28.1% of vehicles were non-grayscale. Other adventure states include Vermont (27.0%), Wyoming (26.6%) and Alaska (25.8%).
The national average of colorful cars was 21.5%, but some states fell well below that percentage. California was the least adventurous, followed by Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and New Jersey.
On a local level, the Harrisburg-Lancaster-York area of ​​Pennsylvania had a 26.3% share of colorful cars. It was followed by Pittsburgh (24.8%), Indianapolis (24.8%) and Detroit (24.4%). The three least colorful cities were all in California, as were Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto area.
