What is the UK’s favourite & most popular car colour?

What is the UK’s favourite & most popular car colour?

How do you decide what colour car to buy? Black and white are usually the two main contenders for the top spot, however according to new reports from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) grey is the UK’s favourite car colour. Although black topped the charts in 2017, grey has crept up the rankings making it the UK’s most popular colour for the first time since 1996.

The facts

Here are the top facts from the SMMT research that might surprise you.

• Over one in five new purchases in 2018 were grey.
• There were 495,127 new grey cars sold last year.
• Grey took the top spot for the first time since records began in 1996.
• More than half of the new cars registered in 2018 were black, grey or white.
• Car sales fell in 2018, meaning almost every colour declined in sales. The exceptions to this were orange and beige.
• Silver fell out of the top five for the first time in years
• Cream and Yellow saw the biggest fall in sales in 2018 - both fell by 34%.

Scotland puts white on top

Although England, Northern Ireland and Wales all put grey on top, Scotland stuck to what they knew and went for the more standard white. Perhaps grey snuck ahead of white in most areas of the UK because of its difficulty to keep clean. Moreover, scratches and paintwork issues show up more easily on white cars, however this is just speculation. If you want to stick with the Scots and keep buying white cars there’s no need to panic - with a good car paint that matches your car perfectly you’ll be able to cover up any marks. Check out How Chipex Car Paint Works to learn more about how you can cover up scratches and marks.

The English keep it colourful

Whilst Northern Ireland and Wales stayed in line with trends and kept it conservative, English drivers explored the 118 different colours on the market. 116 different colours of cars were registered in England in 2018, compared to just 53 different colours being registered in Northern Ireland. Blue gave a splash of colour and hung in the top 5 across the whole of the UK - matching the trends of previous years.

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