What Is The Most Popular Car Colour Choice?

Friday, 28. August 2020

Black remains the most popular car colour on Britain’s roads, with 6.5 million vehicles, but white is the most popular choice for new cars registered.

Looking at data from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for every car registered as of March 2020, the number of white cars rose by 269,314 compared to a year earlier, giving an overall total of just under 5m (4,954,510).

The growth in black cars was much lower, with 11,806 units added in 2020. In March 2019, the figure was 112,035 and in 2018 it was 132,641.

Black’s nearest rival is silver, which has 5.7m (18% share of all cars). There were 363,485 fewer silver cars on the roads in 2020 than there were at the same point in 2019, and more than 1m fewer than in 2016 (1,084,780).

Blue occupies third spot with 5,593,298 – down 87,865 on 2019 but still accounting for 17% of all cars on the roads, with grey in fourth on just under 5m (15.2% share of all cars) – down 236,027 since March 2019, and white in fifth place.

The DVLA data, collated by RAC Insurance, also shows that red is the next most popular colour, with 3.5m, while it is followed by green, which only accounts for 667,000 cars, representing 2% of the whole car parc. Orange (8th), beige/buff (9th) and brown (10th) complete the top 10 colours, each only making up under 1% of all cars.

Pink is the least popular car colour with 22,728 but that has increased very steadily since 2017 when there 19,959 – only multicoloured cars are less popular with just 6,724 down from 7,455 in 2017.

RAC Insurance spokesman Simon Williams said: “While black continues to top the car colours popularity chart, the appeal of white is still very much on the up.

“In fact, today there are 1.5m more white cars on the roads than there were in 2016. It remains to be seen whether white will make its way into the top five car colours, however. If it does, it will have to depose grey, blue or silver.”

He continued: “It’s always very interesting trying to work out at what point a colour goes out of fashion. Clearly, this is what happened with silver which was the number-one choice in 2017 but fell back into second a year later and has remained there ever since.

“While taste in car colours is very individual and subject to what manufacturers offer, there must come a point where drivers feel a particular colour has become too common and think they should opt for something else, after all it wouldn’t be much fun if we all drove the same colour cars.”

Rank	Colour	Mar-20	Share
1	Black	6,578,946	20.1%
2	Silver/Aluminium	5,756,535	17.6%
3	Blue	5,593,298	17.1%
4	Grey	4,954,510	15.2%
5	White	4,395,922	13.5%
6	Red	3,486,735	10.7%
7	Green	667,000	2.0%
8	Orange	215,535	0.7%
9	Beige/Buff	208,349	0.6%
10	Brown	196,089	0.6%
11	Yellow	166,799	0.5%
12	Purple/Mauve/Violet	112,037	0.3%
13	Gold	105,065	0.3%
14	Bronze	90,901	0.3%
15	Turquoise	35,283	0.1%
16	Maroon	29,964	0.1%
17	Cream/Ivory	29,875	0.1%
18	Pink	22,728	0.1%
19	Multicoloured	6,724	0.0%
		32,652,295