Perhaps the hardest part of purchasing a new car is deciding what colour to go for. Once you’ve secured which engine you’d like, the optional extras, you’re often left with the tricky task of trying to which shade would look best parked on our drive or in the garage.

Some brands have made it easier than ever to choose a colour, such as Tesla for example – who currently only offer five colours across their entire range. Other brands however, like to shower you in options, with dozens of seemingly shades to choose from.

Grey reigns supreme…again

It seems British drivers doubled down on their preference for monochrome cars in 2021, with grey increasing its dominance as the UK’s favourite new car colour for the fourth year in a row, according to figures published recently by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). During a year of pandemic-related disruptions impacting total new car registrations, 408,155 grey cars were sold, up 2.8% and accounting for a quarter of the market.

Coming in second place was Black, which has been the most popular car paint in Britain from 2009 to 2012. The shade wrapped 20.5% of passenger cars, and white was in third place, meaning UK drivers were most likely to choose a monochrome car for the 11th year running.

Incredibly, more than six in 10 of all new cars joining sold in 2021 were painted in one of these shades, and surprisingly, blue edged closer to the top three, increasing its sales for the first time in five years.

Best of the rest

The rest of the top 10 remained largely unchanged from 2020, although green overtook orange to gain seventh place with 17,927 cars sold. Sales of green cars rose for the first time since 2015, with 24% more buyers opting for the colour than in the previous year.

At the niche end of the colour palette, gold, yellow and turquoise were the fastest growing colours, with gold more than tripling its appeal, yellow up by a third and turquoise up by a fifth, although together they accounted for less than one percent of the market.