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Black, White and Gray

U.S. consumers have increasingly favored achromatic shades for their vehicles, though the trend seems to have plateaued, new research shows.

June 23, 2026
Photo of the front of a white car

White tops all other U.S. car colors, as it's done for 30 years.

Credit:

Pexels/Vadutskevich

2 min to read


Americans are in a gray scale mood.

When it comes to their car color choices, white comes out on top at 26% of U.S. vehicle market share, according to research by iSeeCars.com, which analyzed colors of 22 million cars model years 1996 to 2025.

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White has in fact topped all U.S. car color choices for 30 years, the automotive search engine and research provider said.

Gray and black aren’t too far behind at 23%, and gray is the biggest gainer over the past 30 years, jumping from about 4% market share, study findings show.

Gray-scale colors combined, including silver, comprise 80% of the U.S. car market, up sharply 47% in 1996, iSeeCars reported. Those colors have particularly risen in popularity in pickups, from 43% in 1996 to 84% today, white leading at 34%.

Interestingly, silver lags its gray-scale counterparts for all vehicles with just 8% market share.

More vibrant colors lost their luster in consumers’ eyes over the 30-year period as the neutral colors ascended, except among sports cars, 36% of which are non-gray scale, iSeeCars said.

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Blue, though, shows some promise of more color breaking through the gray, slightly surpassing silver and piercing the gray-scale group with 9% share.

Thirty years ago, the tables were turned, and red and green ranked second and fourth in color market share, iSeeCars said. Now both, like blue, are in the single digits.

“Up until a few years ago it looked like non-grayscale cars would completely vanish,” said iSeeCars Executive Analyst Karl Brauer. “But the market share of grayscale cars finally stabilized in 2020, at around 80%, suggesting we’ll see at least a sliver of creative car colors going forward.”


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