Car Color Decision Nobody Thinks About Could Cost You $5K in Resale Value
Most people pick a car color based on personal taste. According to a new study, that decision has a measurable dollar amount attached to it, and the gap between the best and worst choices is larger than most buyers expect.
iSeeCars analyzed pricing data on more than 1.2 million three-year-old used vehicles to measure how much color alone affects resale value. The result? Well, two identical cars in different colors can differ by more than $5,000 after just three years on the road.
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Here's a closer look at the results.
Yellow Wins — Which Nobody Expected
The color that holds its value best nationally is yellow, which loses about 24% of its original price after three years. The overall market average sits at 31%. Orange comes in second at around 24.4% depreciation, followed by green at 26.3%. The colors at the bottom — gold, white and black — lose between 31.9% and 34.4% of their value over the same period.
The reason comes down to supply and demand. Yellow, orange and green are uncommon choices, which means fewer of them hit the used market.
The Numbers Vary by Vehicle Type
The color-value relationship isn't identical across every segment, and some of the differences are worth knowing before choosing.
For trucks, orange holds the strongest resale value, depreciating only about 16% over three years. The color has become associated with high-performance trim levels from Ford and Toyota, which created demand that outpaces supply. Green performs nearly as well in trucks.
For SUVs, orange and green also top the retention rankings. White and black SUVs — the two most common choices — lose more than $17,000 in value on average over three years, well above the segment average.
Sedans follow the national pattern with one notable exception; green is one of the worst colors for sedan resale, even though it performs well in other segments. Buyers in the sedan market apparently don't respond to it the same way truck and SUV buyers do.
Minivans flip the script entirely. Bright colors like yellow and orange aren't even offered in most minivan lineups, and the colors that hold value best — green, brown, silver — are all relatively understated. Minivans in black, gray and white depreciate fastest.
Coupes and convertibles reward bold choices most aggressively. Yellow coupes lose only about 14.5% of their value over three years, compared to the segment average of 22.6%. For convertibles, orange and yellow both top the rankings while silver and black trail badly.
See the full iSeeCars color study for methodology and complete segment breakdowns.
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