We’re all painfully aware of how vastly life has changed in the United States over the past few decades, and not in many positive regards. Not to get political, but Wendy’s has done away with its iconic solariums, Pizza Hut’s iconic red shingle roofs have become a thing of the past, coffee shops that were once filled with cozy sofas and lounge chairs are now full of metal stools and wooden benches, and the cars on American roads have almost all gone gray.
We used to be a proper country, man. A country that at one point sold nearly as many red cars as white ones, and nearly as many green cars as black ones. Now the most popular non-grayscale color is blue, which accounts for just 9.1% of all new cars. To make matters worse, we now know that the number of new cars painted a boring shade of grayscale has nearly doubled since 1996, up 47.3% according to data from iseecars.com.
We’ve previously covered the country’s not-so-gradual descent into monotonous grayscale on several occasions, but that doesn’t make things any less bleak. Last year we even wrote about how bright paint colors actually increase a car’s resale value, and yet America’s gray pride is still running strong, and it sickens me.
Why is everything getting so boring?
I was born in late 1995, so though I don’t have especially vivid memories of the ’90s, I will never forget how colorful everything was. From Nickelodeon’s zany bright color schemes to the neon carpets in Chuck E. Cheese to the neon signs adorning the walls of Targets, nothing was seemingly complete without a splash of color.
Looking at popular colors in 1996, white was still the most popular color at 22.1% of the market, but red was the second most popular color at 20.1%. Now, red cars account for a measly 7% of the market. Black cars were the third-most popular color in 1996 accounting for 14.2% of new cars sold, but in 2025, black was the second-most popular color, with 23.4% of new cars sold painted this low-key shade. Gray has seen the most significant rise in popularity, adorning just 3.6% of new cars sold in 1996, but the dull hue was slathered on 22.9% of new cars in 2025 — up a mind-boggling 528.4%.
The rest of the top 13 most popular car colors are similarly unexciting, with the popularity of blue, red, green, brown, beige, yellow, gold, and purple cars dropping between 1996 and 2025. The only real color that gained in popularity was orange, which went up from 0.2% of the market in 1996 to a staggering 0.3% of all new cars sold in 2025. I’m all about inclusivity, but all this gray pride is really making me question what type of country the U.S. is becoming.
