The wide vision adopted by its color designers has helped the car sector maintain its
sway over color choices in other markets.
Automobile makers have, for example,
been giving high profile over the last few
years to blue as the color of advanced, energy efficient technologies. Volkswagen
has called a new engine technology range
BlueMotion while Mercedes has dubbed
an innovative diesel engine Blue Efficiency.
When Toyota launched its hybrid
Prius model, which is powered by a mix
of battery and gasoline energy, blue was
prominent among its selection of colors
for the cars.
“Blue is being seen as important by the
car makers because of its potential to be-
come a new techno color, like silver is at
the moment in many markets,” said Mark
Woodman, trend consultant at Global
Color Research, a UK-based color consul-
tancy. “Blue is now becoming more con-
spicuous in interiors and in fashion, where
you are seeing a lot of combinations of
blue and brown.”
In the autumn/winter of 2012/13 Global
Color is predicting that blue will be among
the key colors because of a liking among
consumers for water-related shades.
Tikkurila, the Finnish-based decorative
paints company, is seeing blue and blue-grays emerging as popular exterior colors in
Scandinavia. “Natural warm green tones,
which are already here may soon be accompanied by colder blue-greens, which have already appeared in clothing fashion,” said
Marika Raike, Tikkurila’s design manager.
Global Color believes that the general
shift to stronger colors will be helped by
what it calls the ‘bleep’ factor—a tendency
for bright colors to be applied to parts of
electronic equipment and components,
particularly in the interior of cars and in
household appliances.
In Europe, consumers have been displaying their historical tendency for a
greater liking for color than their U.S.
counterparts, which varies in its intensity
between countries. “Apart from brown,
we’re seeing a trend towards exotic, bold
colors like yellow, violet and various
shades of red,” said Gutjahr.
In parts of Eastern Europe the liking
for visually striking colors is even more
powerful than in much of Western Eu-
rope. “It seems that the Russians tend to
prefer more rich and bright shades than
the Scandinavians,” said Maarit Taskinen,
Tikkurila’s customer segment director for
Russian consumers. “For example, it is
seen in interior design magazines that
modern designers are using very dramatic
colors and color combinations.”
Color specialists doubt whether the in-
clination towards more high impact col-
ors will falter because of the social effects
of a new economic downturn.
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