Automotive colour trend moves towards nature

In the foreseeable future, natural colours will be playing a more powerful role for cars. These are the results of the current trend forecast presented by the BASF Coatings’ design team. Knowing what colours will be a hit with car buyers in three to five years is not just relevant for the car manufacturers. The refinishing industry also has to prepare for the new colour trends early on.

According to the BASF designers’ 2012-2013 trend forecast, which has just been published, the automotive colours in future will be “naturally cultivated”. The forecast predicts that developments in the world of automotive colours will be particularly apparent outside the range of the staple colours black and silver.

The brown trend predicted by BASF experts years ago is continuing. For instance, the colour is already used for nearly seven per cent of the newly registered cars in Germany and will remain at this high level. “There are signs that the need for more colour on the roads is continuing and that, in future, we will be tapping into further colour spaces, such as bronzes and emeralds. Specifically, green is becoming more significant,” the global design team explained in the report. Mark Gutjahr, head of Design Europe, predicts, “The continued high value assigned to the notion of ecology may now again be signified by the colour green and this colour will return to cars in four to five years. That’s about how long it takes for a trend colour to appear on the roads. So we still have to wait a bit for green.”

The return to the colour green is a global trend demonstrated by the forecast put forward by the BASF designers from North America, Asia and Europe. For their trend forecasts, they analyse a wide variety of social trends.