The nature of color

A question of culture

Colors are a material and a ­commodity, but they are also loaded with many layers of meaning, impact and feeling. For example, in China, green is associated with the female principle of yin and serves as a symbol of long life and compassion. In Islamic culture, on the other hand, green is male, as the color of ­Muhammad. It denotes things like mental well-­being and material prosperity. Europeans, meanwhile, associate green with growth and believe it is good against tension and stress – and so effective, in fact, that some health-insurance funds in Switzerland now support the treatment of burnout patients with green light waves.

A culture’s location in terms of climate also has a bearing on how colors are perceived. If you see red when you are angry, you are probably not a Russian. In very cold countries, red – as the color of warmth – has mainly positive associations. In Russia, red means something valuable or beautiful, and the metaphor that translates literally as “red word” denotes a witty remark. In Arab culture, where scorching heat can become life-threatening, red represents something demonic. In China, it is the color of happiness, and many small children wear red clothes.   

From mood to trend

When trend consultant Michell Lott from São Paulo, Brazil, is developing color trends, what matters to him is not so much cultural symbolism as current needs. As a color expert, he conducts worldwide research to absorb moods from which he can create new color palettes. ­Currently, for example, one of these is for Suvinil, a BASF decorative paint brand for ­surfaces such as walls, furniture or floors, ­marketed in South America and selected African countries. 

“Colors are energy. You absorb them when you enter a room,” the interior design expert says. In the year of the coronavirus pandemic, its screaming flood of news, and worries about people’s ­families and jobs, Lott encountered a need in ­society for calm and reassurance. This withdrawal into an inner world required colors that would not provide additional bursts of energy to unsettle people even more. He developed a color range containing ­subtly pigmented white tones with ­different degrees of saturation. In Lott’s view, mineral coloring, bright green tones, and earth and brown pigments reflect the desire of people stressed by the pandemic to form a bond with nature.

Now, stronger dashes of color are again becoming mixed in with the calm tones in the color palette that Lott developed – some blue here, or candy orange there. For the color consultant, this expresses the desire to return to more vibrancy after long lockdowns. But these richer colors also represent technology and digitalization. Nevertheless, Lott is convinced that “the trend toward natural earth tones will continue for ten to fifteen years.”

Working with the global design team, he has developed a trend radar that observes, for example, how values in a society shift over the long term. Since the aim is to translate trends into colors for automobiles that match the spirit of their times, there is no room for short-term color trends that only last for a year, as they do in fashion. Vehicle colors have to remain current for more than one season. This is due partly to the development cycles and marketing activities of vehicle manufacturers and partly to their customers. Germans, for example, drive their vehicles for around nine-and-a-half years on average. It takes two to three years to develop a vehicle paint and make it ready for series production. Gutjahr and his team are constantly working on their trend research, so that they are always able to develop and present new color nuances.

Desire for warmer hues

Gutjahr was already observing the trend toward warm color tone ranges in pre-coronavirus times. “These tones represent a desire for a more empathetic society, as well as the global phenomenon that people no longer want to organize their life plans exclusively according to the performance principle,” the BASF design chief says. The pandemic has further strengthened this trend.

Consequently, beige has become a new trend color in the latest color ­palettes for automobiles. Gray tones are becoming gentler and less metallic, and a mineral quartz gray is appearing with many ­manufacturers. Warmer color tones are gradually infiltrating themselves among the harsh, bluish paints on the roads. With his 33-year-old Porsche in metallic nougat brown, Gutjahr is therefore very much in line with the trend. A Porsche color also currently inspires the design chief: frozen berry. This new, warm, gray-pink color tone shows that even sporty automobile types are not immune to the trend toward a new gentleness.

However, the roads are still dominated by different colors. White accounted for 26 percent of new registrations in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region in 2021. Gray ranked second on 23 percent, followed by black on 15 percent. The most popular colorful tone, on 14 percent, was blue, which manufacturers used in around 180 different color nuances. The proportion of bright colors is slowly increasing again in all vehicle segments. A quarter of all mid-range vehicles are painted in a chromatic shade. For larger vehicles, the figure is as high as 30 percent – as it is for small cars, where color diversity is at its highest.

The courage in color choice that ­drivers demonstrated 30 years ago has now become a thing of the past. “The past two decades have been the least colorful,” Gutjahr says. The silver of the noughties gave way ten years ago to white, which is now the most popular vehicle color worldwide. White is considered to be clean, elegant, classy, timeless and classic – especially in China, where more than half of new vehicle registrations are white.

Unachievable nature

In theory, drivers can now choose from 250,000 colors. However, although so much is now possible, nature offers ­displays of color that are extremely hard to replicate artificially. The thrilling color appearance of the bird of ­paradise, whose plumage changes between orange-­yellow and blue-green depending on how the light falls, is missing from the ­standard ­repertoire of color designers and pigment miners. The bird owes its iridescence, which remains inimitable to this day, to its plumage, which is structured and arranged in a very distinctive way. Companies such as BASF are experimenting with new ­artificial carrier substances that are intended to catch the light so that it shimmers like
the plumage of the bird of paradise.