Axalta Coating Systems has released Destination Color 2016, a portfolio of color choices inspired by changing consumer lifestyles and designed to enable automobile manufacturers to select colors that will fulfill their customers’ preferences and color choices for vehicles in China and around the world.
Axalta’s color trends, presented in Destination Color 2016, are grouped into four color destinations that reflect megatrends: Newtopia, Pop-up Zone, Inner State and Cyber Scene. The megatrends reflect an array of colors for consumers with different personal tastes and styles as well as vehicle preferences.
Newtopia is filled with dream-like colors such as peach, pink shades and muted purple with flake or tricoat pearl effects. The target vehicle segment is small- and medium-size cars.
“A subset of millennial consumers purchasing vehicles would like these colors as they search for a new look to accentuate their personalities or make a fashion statement with their choice of vehicle color,” said Nancy Lockhart, Global Color marketing manager at Axalta, who is in China for the Axalta Color Show to present Destination Color 2016 to OEM customers.
“As a color innovation leader, Axalta color experts have, for the last 90 years, been in the forefront of automotive color design and remained focused on partnering with vehicle manufacturers by keeping a finger on the pulse of industry trends and forecasting the designs and color preferences that will engage consumers in the years to come,” Lockhart added.
Pop-up Zone highlights the brilliant, high chroma colors that are popping up on the roads. Blue hues are trending in medium and dark versions while reds are found in medium shades with a high chroma. Intense reds and blues have global appeal for a range of vehicles. Bright green, teal and yellow are popular with small, sporty cars while orange is gaining popularity with small cars and trucks. Chroma designates particularly rich color hues achieved with specially developed pigments and dispersion technology.
Colors that spread a calming and balanced atmosphere with a homey feel are grouped into Inner State. These include shades of brown, caramel, green, black and dark red, some with a smoky appearance while others are dark with deep chroma. These colors are popular with luxurious high-end vehicle brands.
Neutral colors showcased in the Cyber Scene group remain popular, but the colors this year come with a cool factor. These include hints of blue in both the gray and silver neutrals. White continues to reign with sparkling effects, opaque beige and gray, plus new flake effects that dance in the sun for these colors.
Axalta, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in the coating industry this year, established the first-ever Color Advisory Committee 90 years ago to craft colors specifically for cars. Since then, Axalta has remained committed to color technology and innovation. Over the decades, Axalta has built a database of more than seven million colors, which provides both OEMs and collision repair technicians with one of the most extensive color databases in the world. In addition, for more than 60 years, Axalta has published its annual Global Automotive Color Popularity Report that tracks color trends around the world.
China is an important focus for Axalta’s color innovation and technology. Axalta has invested in facilities such as its Global Color Lab in Shanghai where color experts work closely with automotive OEMs to create colors that meet local and regional demands while analyzing market trends for color preferences.
