In 2025, it was any colour you like as long as it’s grey – or green… by Dave Moss.
Britain’s vehicle manufacturers’ trade body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), has just released details of the best selling car colours in 2025 – and for the eighth consecutive year Grey has emerged as Britain’s most popular new car colour, with no less than 558,050 cars registered. It alone accounted for more than a quarter (27.6%) of all new car registrations, and a 2.7% volume increase on 2024 set a new record total for the colour as well. A long way behind in second place was Black, which scored 464,369 registrations, a 9.7% increase year on year – and its highest volume since 2019. As in 2024 Blue was third, with a 4.9% increase taking it to 306,349 registrations. Almost two thirds (65.8%) of all the new cars joining UK roads in 2025 were sold in one of these three colours.
Lower down the charts, White retained fourth place, though its popularity appears to be waning, with sales volumes recording the steepest fall of the year, down 9% to 265,462 units. Silver, meanwhile, a colour which dominated Britain’s roads in the early 2000s, returned to the top five for the first time in almost 10 years. Red, like White another past favourite of British car buyers, has also fallen from favour recently, dropping to sixth position in 2025, its 5.8% market share now the lowest since the SMMT began keeping detailed records in 2001.
Green cars were placed as seventh most popular – recording the strongest annual growth in the top 10 – and not just because of electric vehicles. Sales were up 46.3% in 2025, with 99,793 examples taking to the road – the highest volume in 20 years. Looking at “Green and Green”, interestingly, sales of green-coloured battery electric (BEV) cars almost doubled year on year – up 95.2% on 2024 to 23,249 units – which translates into around one in 20 new green-coloured BEVs, against just one in 300 last year. BEV buyers in general still preferred the nation’s number one colour choice however – 131,984 BEV’s sold last year were in Grey.
Lower down the top ten, Yellow holds eighth position with 10,725 units sold, although volumes declined by 10.2% – the first reduction since 2019. Some 9,614 Orange cars were sold, down 10.6% year on year, and a surprise at no 10 in the chart, where Mauve took only 0.3% of the new car market, but sales were up 37.9% to 5711 cars, most of them presumably the latest BMW 1 series…
Looking at the market in general, it’s pretty clear that size matters in choosing your car colour; Grey was the top choice for most shapes and sizes of new car, but Blue led the mini segment, while buyers of plug-in hybrids (PHEV’s), executive cars and luxury saloons all preferred Black.
Lower down the colour charts there were more surprises, led by the sudden popularity of Brown cars, which sold 4027 units – a 66.3% rise – and the unaccountable renaissance of Cream coloured cars which achieved a startling 741.6% year on year surge to record 3,215 sales in 2025. Propping up the list, Maroon and Pink together totalled just 330 sales, while just 12 owners took delivery of a new car finished in Turquoise.
The 2025 car colour hotspot was Berkshire, where there must be something in the water – or maybe it’s in the water-based paint. In 2025 the county became home to 6,308 Green and 667 Yellow coloured new cars, both record numbers unmatched anywhere else in the UK,
And finally, the van market, where White van man can live serenely on, secure in the knowledge that his new van is one over 60% which took to the roads in this most popular colour last year – with Grey and Black accounting for almost all of the rest. If, however, it was you that bought the solitary Maroon van sold in 2025, don’t curl up in embarrassment and hide in a dark corner – better to think of it as an absolutely unique marketing opportunity for your business..!
