The world's favourite car colour is white, but Indians prefer silver

Unlike any other aspect of life, there are no grey areas when it picking the colour of a new car; it really is a black or white decision.

The annual Axalta Global Automotive Colour Popularity Report - the most comprehensive of its kind in the industry - finds that for the fifth year running, white is the most popular car colour across Asia, Europe and America, accounting for over one third (35%) of all vehicles sold. Black is a distant second - 18% - followed by silver (13%) and grey (10%).

In fact, of all the individual countries studied for this year's report only drivers in India prefer silver (30%) over white (29%). Meanwhile the Chinese are completely in awe of white, which accounting for 50% of all new cars in that market, as is Africa (46%) and South America (37%).

However, there are some regional tonal quirks. North America is where red is most popular, globally, specified on 11% of new cars compared with just 6% of Asian cars. And it's Europeans that love both blue (9%) and black (21%) the most.

"For the fifth consecutive year, white is the world's most popular colour. However, we did see some pockets of colour when we looked across regions," said Nancy Lockhart, Axalta Colour Marketing Manager. "For instance, red jumped eight percentage points over 2014 in South America, mid-shade blues are significant in Europe, and bright blues gained popularity in North America."

To see how popular these colour choices are, one need look no further than the LA Auto Show, which opens its doors to the public this weekend. With the exception of the new Lamborghini Huracan, which went with a radiant racing red, every new car on show is finished in white, blue, or a silver grey tone.

But while blue might be staging a comeback helped in part, according to Axalta by the growing popularity of compact and intermediate SUVs and crossovers, which seem to best suit the shade, green and yellow could be set to disappear from options lists altogether. Green accounts for just 1% of cars sold this year and yellow with 2% isn't faring much better. At 6%, even brown and beige are much more popular choices.

And while it might seem that white's popularity has exploded out of nowhere over recent years, Axalta's data, which stretches back 63 years, shows that the tone has been one of the five most popular paint finishes in all but three years since 1953.