How a car’s colours affect the resale value in used cars? The answer is: Colour matters, period. The colour of your new car not only affects the cost of ownership but also the resale value of the vehicle. This is due to many reasons, including the ever-changing colour preferences of the car buying lot. Moreover, even factors like the place of your residence play a definite role in deciding your car’s worth as select paint shades enjoy a higher preference in some locations.
The depreciation of a motor vehicle is its owner’s biggest ownership expense, but this realization mostly hits only when it’s time to sell the car. While many factors play a role in judging the resale value of your vehicle, its paint shade is an important factor that is often overlooked by the seller. We’ve looked into our car sales data, collected over the last few years, to figure out how a particular paint shade affects the resale value of a car. Here are the best colours for the resale value.
In metro cities, things are always on a close call of the colours, as observed that on an average, the resale price of a black car ends up being 5 per cent lower than that of a similar model in white colour. Even silver and red colour shades fetch almost the same prices for a model in similar condition. If you get into intricacies, however, you’ll notice that the silver colour commands a premium of almost 2 per cent over the white paint shades.
This brings us to the most popular colour – silver. Cars in shades of silver are known to be easy to maintain as the minor scratches can be easily concealed. Plus, the paint shade is even known to lose its sheen slower than other models, which is why a used car that has a silver exterior might look newer than a similar model in a dark paint shade, like black.
Even a white car isn’t a bad bet, considering the resale value of these vehicles is only marginally lower than that of silver models. Like silver, even white is reasonably easy to maintain and is an evergreen colour that has a definite fan following. Shades of red are generally preferred by the young or by those who want their vehicles to look sporty. While red is not as easy to maintain as, say, white, it’s still a popular choice among everyone who needs a car that looks bold. Moreover, it’s not anywhere as tough to maintain as, say, black or dark blue. Hence, the selling price that a red coloured car can fetch in the used car market stays close to what you would get for a similar model in white colour.
Conclusion
From all of the above, it gets clear that one should stay away from black if he or she wishes to ensure a relatively high resale value for your used car. It’s clear why black colored cars are the least popular. Even the most minor of the scratches easily show on a black-colored bodyshell, which means the car might look more aged than a similar model in a shade of silver or white. It’s also more difficult to clean a black car, as it is prone to looking quite untidy in a dusty environment.
