Short answer
In material terms, surprisingly little per change and a great deal in total. The EU's reference document for vehicle painting gives nominal values of about 15 ml of paint and 200 ml of rinsing agent per sprayer for each colour change, against 2.5–3.5 kg of base coat sprayed on each body. Because bodies arrive in runs of only two to six of one colour, a change comes every few cars. No published source gives the cost in money, and none was found for plastics moulding.
In a volume car plant each colour has its own ring main, a loop of steel pipe that circulates paint from a central store to the spray booths; rarely used colours are fed from small local systems. At every robot a colour changer selects one of those lines and passes it to the atomiser. Changing colour means three things: pushing out the old paint, cleaning the changer, the feed line and the spray bell, and filling with the new colour. The cleaning uses organic solvent for solvent-based paints, or a rinse that is typically 90% water for water-based ones. The old paint and the used rinse are collected and normally leave the plant as waste, although in the automotive industry 80–90% of cleaning and purge solvent can typically be recovered for reuse. Only the colour coats need this. Primer usually comes in one or a few colours, and the clear coat on top is the same for every car.
The European Commission's reference document reproduces a table of nominal values for a medium-sized passenger car, taken from a German engineering guideline. Per sprayer, a colour change accounts for about 15 ml of paint and 200 ml of rinsing agent; a short rinse without a colour change, done after every one to five bodies for base coat, uses 20–30 ml of solvent. The same table puts the water-based base coat sprayed on one body at 2.5–3.5 kg. A booth has many sprayers, so the losses add up across robots, but the comparison holds: the paint thrown away at a change is small beside the paint applied, and the rinse is the larger stream. Equipment makers quote still lower figures for their latest products — one states about 10 ml of paint and under 10 seconds per change for a changer handling up to 36 colours. That is a product claim and has not been independently tested here.
The obvious way to cut changes is to paint cars of one colour together. The reference document calls this colour grouping, batch painting or block-to-block painting: bodies are held and re-sequenced after the primer oven so that a small convoy of one colour enters the booth. Its benefit is fewer rinses and less paint residue, and it depends on how long the pipe is between colour tank and atomiser. The same document is frank about the limits. Grouping needs storage space and planning, the average group in the automotive industry is only two to six bodies, and elsewhere it notes that colour blocks are often fewer than two cars on average. It also states that low-loss colour changers have reduced the importance of long blocks as a way to save material and emissions. Grouping is still listed among the best available techniques; it is simply no longer the main lever.
The cost of a change scales with the volume of pipe that has to be emptied. Truck and commercial-vehicle paint shops show the extreme: because fleets specify their own liveries, the colour range is typically above 600, most bodies get a single-layer topcoat, and each change means purging five to seven metres of robot supply hose, so large quantities of purging liquid are used and recovered. Special finishes add changes of a different kind. A tinted clear coat means the clear-coat equipment, which in a conventional shop is rarely purged because every car gets the same clear, must now be purged at colour changes and cleaned more often; a plant may run two or three additional clear coats to offer such colours. Cartridge systems avoid the pipework altogether by filling a 0.5–1.0 litre cartridge per job, which the document credits with substantially lower purging losses.
None of this gives a cost in pounds, euros or dollars. The reference document reports quantities and techniques, because its purpose is emissions, and car makers do not publish what a colour change costs them in paint, solvent, waste disposal and lost seconds. For plastics the position is weaker still. Colour changeover in injection moulding and extrusion — purging the barrel, scrapping the transition parts — is discussed at length in trade magazines, usually in case studies written around a purging-compound supplier's product, and Colourwise found no peer-reviewed or official source with general figures. The same is true of minimum order quantities and lead times for custom-coloured masterbatch, which individual suppliers advertise but no neutral source tabulates. Those questions are left unanswered here instead of being filled with marketing numbers.
| Measure | Figure | Applies to | Kind of source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average colour group length | 2–6 bodies | Automotive industry, where colour grouping is used | EU reference document |
| Paint lost per colour change, per sprayer | 15 ml | Nominal value for medium-sized passenger cars (VDI 2013, cited in the BREF) | EU reference document |
| Rinsing agent per colour change, per sprayer | 200 ml | Nominal value for medium-sized passenger cars (VDI 2013, cited in the BREF) | EU reference document |
| Solvent per short rinse without a colour change | 20–30 ml | After 1–5 bodies for base coat, 5–10 for clear coat | EU reference document |
| Water-based base coat sprayed per body | 2.5–3.5 kg | Nominal value for medium-sized passenger cars, before colour-change losses | EU reference document |
| Paint cartridge filled per job in cartridge systems | 0.5–1 litres | Vehicle paint shops using docking-station cartridges | EU reference document |
| Cleaning and purge solvent that can be recovered for reuse | 80–90 % | Automotive industry, on or off site | EU reference document |
| Colours in a truck and commercial-vehicle paint shop's range | 600 colours (typically more than) | Trucks and commercial vehicles, to match fleet liveries | EU reference document |
| Robot supply hose purged at each change | 5–7 m | Truck and commercial-vehicle coating | EU reference document |
| Paint wasted per change by a current arm-mounted colour changer | 10 ml (about) | One maker's product page; changer handles up to 36 colours | Manufacturer's product page |
| Time for a colour change with the same changer | 10 seconds (under) | One maker's product page | Manufacturer's product page |
| Bodies per colour run | Rinsing agent per body per sprayer (ml) | Paint lost per body per sprayer (ml) | Saving against changing every body |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 200 | 15 | 0% |
| 2 | 100 | 7.5 | 50% |
| 3 | 66.7 | 5 | 67% |
| 4 | 50 | 3.8 | 75% |
| 6 | 33.3 | 2.5 | 83% |
| 10 | 20 | 1.5 | 90% |
Why: With current changers the paint lost per change is a few millilitres per sprayer; the dedicated supply line, the stock and the colour-matched parts cost more.
Fix: Look at what the colour adds outside the booth — a paint circuit, inventory, bumpers and trim in the same colour — before the purge.
Why: Product pages describe one new device under ideal conditions.
Fix: Use the reference document's nominal values for typical plants and cite maker figures as claims.
Why: Losses scale with the volume to be purged: a moulding machine's barrel or a truck line's long hoses are different orders of magnitude.
Fix: State the process the figure belongs to, and say when no neutral figure exists.
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
FactStrong evidence
The EU reference document for vehicle painting gives nominal values per sprayer of 15 ml of paint and 200 ml of rinsing agent for a colour change, and 2.5–3.5 kg of water-based base coat sprayed per body, for medium-sized passenger cars.
Caveat: General reference values from a 2013 German engineering guideline reproduced in the document; they depend on the process and on how the plant is operated, and are not measurements of a particular factory.
FactStrong evidence
Where colour grouping is used in the automotive industry the average colour group is between two and six bodies, and low-loss colour-change techniques have reduced the importance of long colour blocks for saving material and solvent.
Caveat: Describes European plants as reported to the working group up to 2018.
FactStrong evidence
Truck and commercial-vehicle paint shops typically run a colour range above 600 to match fleet liveries, which leads to very frequent colour changes and the purging of five to seven metres of robot supply hose each time.
FactLimited evidence
One equipment maker states that its arm-mounted colour changer handles up to 36 colours, changes colour in under 10 seconds and wastes only around 10 ml of paint.
Caveat: A manufacturer's marketing claim for one product on an undated page; not independently verified and not a plant average.
Colourwise analysisModerate evidence
At the reference quantities, a plant painting in runs of one body uses 200 ml of rinsing agent per body per sprayer on colour changes, and a plant painting in runs of six uses about 33 ml — a reduction of 83%.
Based on: The per-change quantity in the reference document divided by the number of bodies painted between changes; see the run-length table.
Caveat: Arithmetic on nominal values. It ignores short rinses, which happen whether or not the colour changes, and solvent recovery.
Colourwise interpretationLimited evidence
No published source was found that states the money cost of a colour change in a vehicle paint shop, or neutral general figures for colour changeover in plastics moulding and for minimum orders of custom-coloured masterbatch.
Based on: Colourwise's search of official reference documents, academic literature and trade press in October 2026; trade-press case studies and suppliers' own pages exist but were not treated as general evidence.
Caveat: An absence of published data found, not proof that none exists.
Reviewed 1 October 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.