Blue is the colour for new cars

The most popular chromatic colour on new cars in Europe is blue, with 10%, according to the 2018 Colour Popularity Report from Axalta.

Blue has the largest colour position of any colour, with 20,000 different variations from pale baby blue to dark midnight blue, and everything in between. As blue is the colour of Standox, one of Axalta’s global refinish brands, the Germany-based brand decided to look into its iconic shade to discover some insights.

Today, there are hundreds of shades of blue, each with its own name, and this breadth of colour spectrum extends into the refinish sector too. There are high chroma blues, coloured aluminium blues, and even coloured glassflake blues.

Olaf Adamek, Standox brand manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said, ‘Blue pigments have their roots in art, and as a brand that has The Art of Refinish at its heart, we know the diversity of blue all too well in the refinish industry. A car is never just blue. Some blues evoke a calming feeling from nature, but there are other blues, so-called pure blues, that express more dynamism and energy, and this is why you often see these blues on expensive cars.’

Europe is the only region in the world where blue has a double-digit share of new car sales, at 10%. And this popularity is clearly reflected in the Standox global colour database, Standowin iQ: for all passenger cars there are more than 21% colours that are categorised as blue. This compares to 15% for grey and 11% for red.

With so many cars on the road sporting any number of blue hues, bodyshops are seeing more chromatic repairs. But blues, particularly dark blues, are not the easiest colours to match. The Axalta labs ensure all the blue refinish formulas have the tints with the right pigments so that refinishers have the ability to create perfect colour matches for any hue.