The most popular vehicle colors in the D.C. metro are black, white, silver and gray, according to vehicle search site iSeeCars.com, which analyzed more than 1.3 million recently sold used vehicles.
But those are also the colors that depreciate the most, based on three-year depreciation of like make and model vehicles. Black is actually at the bottom of the list for depreciation, despite being the most-sold color.
At the top of the list for smallest three-year depreciation in the D.C. area … is yellow. That’s right, yellow.
“When people see yellow as one of the best resale colors, they can’t believe it because how many people want yellow? I always tell them almost nobody. So why are they so valuable then? Because while almost nobody wants yellow, there are even fewer cars available in that color. So, there is hardly anybody who wants a yellow car, and there are almost no yellow cars that exist,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars.
The top four colors for smallest depreciation are all bold, including orange, green and red. While not commonly produced colors by auto manufacturers, there are buyers that seek them out.
Usually, they’re people “who want to stand out,” Brauer said. “I think people who look around and see black and white and silver and gray cars everywhere they look, and they realize whether it’s the ease of finding their vehicle in the parking lot to a sense of breaking free of the single-mindedness pack thinking that the average car buyer is practicing when they buy those other colors.”
Bold and less-often seen colors are also popular with buyers looking for limited-edition models of vehicles, which could become collector-worthy, and those buying special interest, expensive or exotic sports cars.
The same supply-and-demand reason that makes less-often seen colors hold their value has the opposite effect on the most-sold colors.
“The more common something is, as a general rule, the less valuable it is. So, just like in most cities, black and white and silver don’t hold that well in D.C. If you have plenty of those available, why would you pay more for it. You can pick from 10 or 20 or 30 when you go to the local classifieds of cars in those colors. You can negotiate down on price, and if they don’t like it, you can go to the next black one in line,” Brauer said.
Brauer has a theory as to why the colors that are most popular remain so — most assume the colors have broad appeal, even if they may not.
“When you ask someone, ‘Do you like black, white and silver?’ — I think most people would be like, ‘Meh, not really.’ And then you’d say, ‘Well why do you buy that color?’ And they’d say, ‘Well, that seems like the safe color that everyone else likes.’ Then you realize if everyone is assuming that everyone likes these colors, we are all seeing cars all over the place that nobody really does like that much,” he said.
iSeeCars.com’s full depreciation by color report, including different vehicle types, is available online. Below are depreciation rates by color in the D.C. market:
