A house full of color

Color trend prediction (CP 1/2009)

Europe’s colors

Environmental awareness in Europe is a mega-trend that influences car paints, and economic considerations are also playing a heightened role. BASF Coatings designers Eva Höfli, Mark Gutjahr, and Katja Pauli have incorporated these factors into this year’s color trend prediction.

Both trends have to do with change within an existing framework. “The days are over when something had to be totally new and revolutionary to be seen as modern and desirable,” says Höfli.

Now it is about evolution instead of revolution. The most pop-ular car colors by far are still silver, black, blue, red, and white, but the details and nuances are changing. New pigments can now enrich the usually cool silver color with a warm, almost organic note, and subtle color variations.

This expanded range of expression is part of a third main trend towards deliberate restraint and elegant understatement: “Class should only be revealed upon a second or third glance,” says Pauli. The popularity of soft white in Europe for premium vehicles continues, and blue and red tones are obtaining greater depth, intensity, and richness.

Price-sensitive but individualistic buyers are another important segment according to Gutjahr: “The challenge here is to develop color effects that are easier to realize in production without being boring.”

The color black is undergoing an interesting development: “The black of tomorrow will no longer be the simple solution it is today,” predicts Gutjahr. “It will be able to communicate a never-before-seen spectrum of emotions.”

Extremely clear, deep black nuances will soon exist along-side effervescently scintillating or accented black tones. “As odd as it may sound,” says Gutjahr, “it will be a luminous black – even in the dark.”