A recent study by iSeeCars.com shows men prefer brighter, bolder car colors — orange, brown and yellow — compared to women, who preferred more neutral colors such as gold, silver and beige. The study analyzed more than 25 million used cars and 200,000 shoppers.
Orange was the big polarizer for 2014; men were 25 percent more likely to pick that color than women. Last year’s popular picks for men, red and black, fell out of the top three this year in favor of brown and yellow.
Women’s picks of gold, silver and beige may have more to do with the segment in which females traditionally shop. iSeeCars said men’s interest in muscle cars can help explain the palette preferences.
“With more brown and orange car colors being offered in these segments and the increased interest in these colors by male buyers, color specialists at auto manufacturers seem to have gotten their color forecasts right,” said iSeeCars.com CEO Phong Ly said in a statement.
For women, gold leapfrogged silver as the top pick this year. Last year, brown made the list of colors women preferred over men, but that color was replaced by beige this year. Ly said the shift may be due to a lack of available cars that appeal to women.
“One explanation for the popularity of beige over brown may be because the market share of brown cars in the minivan segment declined by 24.7 percent, and that segment tends to be extremely popular with women,” Ly said.
Enthusiasts were not surveyed in the study because a brown diesel wagon with a manual transmission can’t win everything.
In other news, brown is now brighter and bolder than gold. Hmm…
Did you see the brown Viper? I think that’s plenty bold.
Q: How do I ruin the future resale value of my new Viper?
A: Pick it in Diaper Smudge Brown pearl coat.
That is GHASTLY.
I believe Mark called it “high fiber brown,” Photoshop color key #432509, if you’re interested.
Looks like the colour program on the factory website that almost always has zero resemblance with the actual colours.
You never know, it could be the latest iteration of the bright green Audi S5.
Worst color I’ve ever seen a Viper in, no contest. Horrible.
I’m pretty sure it’s bold because it’s a Viper, not because it’s brown.
Wait. Do men actually prefer bolder colors, or do men prefer bolder cars (sports cars, muscle cars, sporty cars) that also happen to typically be offered with bolder color options. “Women’s picks of gold, silver and beige may have more to do with the segment in which females traditionally shop”. The answer is yes.
My wife always makes negative comments when she sees a yellow or orange car. But even she gets excited when she sees the orange Mclaren MP4-12C in our neighborhood.
The bolder car/bolder color things go hand-in-hand, yes.
So dislike orange, but would definitely get excited seeing an orange McLaren rolling through my neighborhood.
How could you dislike this color?
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQUnL0tLdk6afaMEl1-Skrj9TT1AwmuTjYNHmCzowLSuFlTelBx_eD60IY
I get it, it seems a lot of women dislike it. A couple of women I know hate it big time.
I’ll agree. The Mazda CX-5 comes in a really neat medium blue, which I want. However, Mazda won’t make that color available to me, since I want a manual transmission. A pox on Mazda!
I like color. Black, grey, silver, and white are not colors.
@eggsalad: Honda is doing to same thing! Their “Build Your Honda” webpage automatically disables the color choice option, if a manual is selected!! I, too, LIKE COLOR, & manuals!!! :-)
Nor will Mazda let you have AWD, a moon roof or the larger engine with that manual transmission CX-5. I looked at the CX-5 and I probably would have gone for it if I could get the stick with moon roof and a color.
Insisting on a stick nowadays generally limits your choices. Embrace the Dark Side.
No manufacturer misses those lost sales.
Remember a few years back when copper was popular? That was a color that men loved and women hated. Not sure why, but it was pretty consistent across everyone I asked.
I still like that color. It’s nice and I saw a new Verano in it not too long ago. The Lucerne also looked good in copper.
Overall, I prefer deep metallic reds.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2011/11/buick-lacrosse-gl-concept.jpg
It was a great color for hiding rust spots on Cobalts.
^ Comment Of The Day.
Brown is bold? Who knew?
Me, I like blue generally, but red is nice also. Yellow works for small cars and sporty cars. My first car was a yellow 1975 VW Rabbit.
I, for one, prefer women more than brighter, bolder car colors.
I hear you there. Unless it’s a Signal Green 911 then all bets are off!
I prefer brighter, bolder women.
Huh. I would have guessed the other way around. I know a lot of women who drive red cars in particular, while most of the men I know drive silver, gray, or black cars. (The one outlier is a guy who drives a olive-drab Xterra.)
My wife and I have rather similar color preferences in cars. Both of us find white and silver too boring, are OK with gray and black, like milder colors like dark red/blue/green, and find super-bright colors too offensive and loud. Our (currently) one car is dark gray, and the one I just sold was silver but I didn’t get a lot of color choice when I bought it.
‘Christmas Poo Metallic’
Hmm, a brown Viper… It would be 1 of 1 for sure. Put that in your ad copy and smoke it.
My wife and I share similar color tastes, but there are exceptions for the both of us. We both like bright colors (our house has yellows and oranges inside, and we just painted the outside a “bright” orange, compared to others, for an exterior paint).
Our cars include/have included: 1995 Purple Tacoma LX, 2002 Yellow Xterra, 2002 Nogaro Blue Audi S4, 2003 Lemans Sunset 350z, 2005 Copper FX35, 2006 WRB WRX wagon, 2008 Red Prius, and a 1972 240z painted in Audi Solar Orange.
“2003 Lemans Sunset 350z” best color ever… says another ’03 Sunset 350Z owner.
I love bold colored cars, anything that is NOT a shade of grey, of which black and white are at the extreme ends. I’ve owned yellow, red, blue, green, gold and orange vehicles. I have also owned black, white and silver of which only silver is acceptable to me since it hides dirt. My wife’s current car is white (actually cream/off white) and its impossible to keep looking good. However her ride does have brown accents and its a manual… so maybe its not *that* bad.
Do they still make dark metallic green cars besides the C7 Corvette? I’d love another dark green car.
Yaas.
http://liquid-finish.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/LFD20-14.jpg
Mmm, that looks positively delicious!
And this, nomnom. Looks great with the camel interior.
http://www.germancarforum.com/attachments/9082a2579713688fb5907b1bf2c4e157-jpg.312768/
Oh yeezus.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fJ-7ia73hGA/UQEGjQipG0I/AAAAAAAAV4U/M5bc_y5s3-0/s1600/Audi+S7+in+Exclusive+Smaragdgr%C3%BCn+Perleffekt+(1).JPG
That A8 color is a dead ringer for my Tasman Green BMW. Green in all shades desperately needs to come back in style. I’ll take my red-brown Chestnut interior over boring tan though.
I went plenty bright this time around – Estoril Blue.
I prefer a green that doesn’t just look ‘dark’ at night. But there are few greens out there like that. They are either way to yellowy-bright (Camaro & Spark?) or too dark. The Mustang & xB had shades that were close.
I wonder if pigments for such a color are a problem.
Chevrolet will sell you many of their models in “Rain-forest Green Metallic” which I find quite fetching but its extra cost. My local Chevy dealer has ordered a decent # of vehicles in that paint scheme but I wonder if its a gimmick to jack up the MSRP.
Do they sell trucks in that color? I’ve seen some newer Sierras in dark green.
Yep, looks like they do! Awesome.
Yup, local Chevy dealer has at least 2 Silverados in that color – one 2wd extended cab and one 4wd four door.
I think you can still get a Miata in dark green, with a tan top and interior.
[ visits MazdaUSA web site ]
Nuts. Not any more.
Damn, I always liked the green/tan combo on roadsters.
I remember when deep green was all the rage in the early 90’s so seeing it now almost seems retro.
It’s crazy how popular dark green was then. My folks bought a ’92 Cherokee in dark green – the dealer had about 25 Cherokees on the lot, and I am pretty sure 20 of them were that same color. Some solid, some with the silver accents. My folks got the green/silver combo. Wish I had that little SUV now! A load-up Laredo with the 4.0L and stickshift!
Deep green and dark blue with tan interiors, so 90s.
I remember all those green with tan GC’s. With the gold wheels and trim. I always preferred the bright red with gold wheels and trim, honestly. I don’t want us to return to THAT green, but I do like a deeper, more metallic green.
Dark blue metallic is more suited to parchment or white interiors in my eyes.
I think dark blue metallic is ready for a comeback. My scientific support is that my wife is looking at the new Pilot and is thinking about the dark blue. And her interior choice would be “grey”, but it’s so light as to be more of a shade of white. I agree with you that that’s the way to go. Although I recall a kind of mustard interior going well with dark blue on older BMWs/Mercs.
Agreed on dark blues. My latest car is Jazz Blue metallic and it gets a lot of compliments.
Oh yeah. That’s back when I was doing the ordering for our family’s dealership. If I had an allocation of 10 minivans, 5 or 6 of them were going to be green.
As for me personally, red is always my number one choice. I don’t want anything in brown, yellow, green, beige, champagne, or black.
In other news, far more men than women suffer from color blindness.
Two color combos I think just look good in any era:
– Dark green with tan interior
– Dark blue with gray interior
Any car automatically looks classier with those color schemes. Dark, rich hues just look good on cars in general, and age well.
There’s not much bolder and more obnoxious than a 5500 lb truck with a six foot wide slab of chrome on the front but I had a hell of a time finding a Ram on the lot in a decent color.
I like greens. GM’s dark metallic green is awesome. Ram’s green is so dark as to be black in anything other than direct sunlight, where it turns greenish black, and they don’t stock them anyway.
I like blues. Ram has two, one of which is so dull and dark as to barely count. Any given lot would have two of one and three of the other, few enough that they’d each have a glaring oversight like leaving off the $75 32 gallon tank or the $300 LSD. (That order book thrift always seemed to go away when it came to adding $2000 of running boards and bigger wheels.)
I don’t like red so there’d be a half dozen of them, all configured just the way I wanted.
The other 80% of the lot, no exaggeration, would be one or another shade of monochrome blah occasionally broken up by the excitement of beige or dogchit brown. I settled for dark blue.
I don’t know how many times over the last 40 years where I’ve looked at cars and either the color is perfect and the options are wrong, or the options are perfect and the color is awful. If I was looking at a Ram, I would have no problems, as red is great, IMHO, but trying to find a Challenger equipped the right way that isn’t silver or black is very difficult. I won’t buy a car with a sunroof, and I find no end of Challengers with sunroofs that are the perfect in every other way.
“Study: Men Prefer Bright Car Colors More than Women”
No, In most cases, I really prefer women. Though I once did own a lime-green New Beetle (diesel, to honor my Y-chromosome).
This is a strange study, since it’s the opposite of most stereotypes. Red has always been the stereotypical “girl” colour for cars (other than sports and supercars, anyway), and when’s the last time you saw a brightly coloured Mirage driven by a male? And most silver/beige/white generic commuter sedans seem to be driven by males. It’s only crossovers where I agree that women love the neutrals. And what kind of women doesn’t go gaga over all the pastel tones of 50’s cruisers?
I tend to not see any women in bright attention-getting cars. I haven’t noticed many in red cars. To me, the survey matches what I expect.
But I do agree that I expect many women do like the pastels from the ’50s.
It kinda depends on the car though. I cant speak for women, I dont care to.
I can only speak for *some* men and how I feel about colours.
A performance car, something exotic or even something domestic but loud does fine in a lairy bright colour. People understand that even Anton the Accountant can let his hair down and drive that Plum Crazy SRT Charger Hemi.
Anton however will never take a plum crazy Chevy Cruze (if such a colour was possible) nor even a solid fire engine red Honda. He may take that Soul Red Mazda 3 though.
Of course if he was a lot more beige he may take a beige Camry but I doubt many people would take a bright orange Camry RZ (google it).
I would take a bright orange Lamborghini Huracan or a Viper or Mustang but a Camry or anything smaller and non performance? doubtful
maybe a orange Fiesta or Focus ST?