Short answer
Because they count different cars in different categories. A paint supplier estimates the colours of vehicles built across a region and reports silver as its own colour; a national registry counts every car registered in one country under whatever colour group its form allows. Germany's registry puts white, grey and black at 78.8% of new cars in 2023 and the United Kingdom's trade body puts four neutrals at 70.0% in 2025. Neither figure contradicts a supplier's European estimate, and neither can be joined to it.
The DuPont/Axalta and BASF reports describe vehicles built in a year, across regions the companies define for themselves, from production and paint-application data they do not publish. A registration statistic describes vehicles registered in one country in a year, wherever they were built, and is a complete count rather than an estimate. A fleet register describes what is on the road now: each year's cars minus everything since scrapped or exported. A car built in Slovakia in December, registered in Germany in February and exported to Poland five years later appears in the first for one year, the second for the next, and has left the third. The three will not agree, and a gap between them is not a change in anyone's taste.
The suppliers report silver and grey separately. Germany's published table has six colour groups and no silver, so a silver car is, as far as the figures show, a grey one: grey alone is 31.6% of German registrations in 2023. The UK's trade body does list silver, at 6.3% in 2025, beside grey at 27.6%. The Dutch register allows fourteen values, again without silver, and stops using beige and cream after 2015. A neutral total survives these differences better than its parts do, since silver stays inside it either way, but any comparison of 'grey' between a registry and a paint report is a comparison of two definitions.
Germany, 2014–2023: white, grey and black rose from 74.6% to 78.8% of new registrations, with grey gaining most, while red fell from a high of 7.2% in 2019 to 5.1% and green more than doubled from a small base to 2.6%. United Kingdom, 2022–2025: the four neutrals stayed between 68.6% and 70.7%, white fell from 16.7% to 13.1% and green rose from 1.9% to 4.9%. The Dutch cohorts are the most colourful at the end: a neutral share of 73.1% among 2025 cars, with green at 7.6%.
The second table on this page sets Germany's neutral share beside the suppliers' figures for Europe and for Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the years where both exist. It is laid out in columns, not drawn as a line, on purpose. Germany is one of many markets inside each region and is neither a sample of it nor a later reading of it. Where the German figure is lower than the regional one, that may be Germany, the method, or the handling of colours outside the six published groups; the data cannot say which. What the pairing can do is check direction: if a supplier reports European neutrals rising over several years and a census inside the region shows the same, the rise is less likely to be an artefact of one company's method.
For the colour mix of the world's new vehicles, only the supplier reports exist; they are the long series and the only global one. For what was actually registered in a country, a registry is better: it is a census, it has no commercial interest in the answer, and Germany's is published with counts. For what is on the road, a fleet register is the only source, and the Dutch one is open to anyone. For change over time, stay inside one source. The kind of count behind every series is printed beside it on the analysis page so that a figure from one is never read as the continuation of another.
| Source | Year | Neutral share (%) | Chromatic share (%) | Top three (%) | Entropy (bits) | Normalised entropy | Effective colours | Categories |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany (KBA registrations) | 2014 | 74.6 | 25.4 | 74.6 (black, grey, white) | 2.43 | 0.87 | 5.4 | 7 |
| Germany (KBA registrations) | 2023 | 78.8 | 21.2 | 78.8 (grey, black, white) | 2.37 | 0.84 | 5.2 | 7 |
| United Kingdom (SMMT registrations) | 2022 | 68.6 | 31.4 | 62.5 (grey, black, white) | 2.78 | 0.80 | 6.9 | 11 |
| United Kingdom (SMMT registrations) | 2025 | 70.0 | 30.0 | 65.8 (grey, black, blue) | 2.75 | 0.79 | 6.7 | 11 |
| Netherlands (RDW register, survivors) | 2010 | 73.8 | 26.2 | 74.7 (grey, black, blue) | 2.51 | 0.66 | 5.7 | 14 |
| Netherlands (RDW register, survivors) | 2025 | 73.1 | 26.9 | 73.1 (grey, black, white) | 2.49 | 0.69 | 5.6 | 12 |
| Year | Germany, registrations (white + grey + black) | Europe, supplier estimate | EMEA, supplier estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 74.6 | — | — |
| 2015 | 75.4 | — | — |
| 2016 | 75.6 | — | — |
| 2017 | 75.0 | 78 (BASF 2017 report) | — |
| 2018 | 75.2 | — | — |
| 2019 | 75.8 | — | 77 (BASF 2019 report) |
| 2020 | 75.9 | — | — |
| 2021 | 76.0 | — | 73 (BASF 2021 report) |
| 2022 | 77.4 | — | — |
| 2023 | 78.8 | 79 (Axalta 2023 report) | — |
Why: The earlier point is a paint supplier's regional estimate and the later one a national registration count, plotted as one line.
Fix: Plot each source as its own series, labelled with what it counts, and compare changes within a source only.
Why: One source has a silver category and the other files silver cars under grey.
Fix: Compare grey plus silver, or the neutral total, and say which categories each source has.
Why: The figures come from a fleet register, where each cohort has been thinned by years of scrapping and export.
Fix: Use a fleet register for what is on the road; for what was sold, use registrations from the year itself.
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.
Observed market dataStrong evidence· Germany· 2023
Germany's Federal Motor Transport Authority counted 898,003 grey, 754,410 black and 589,056 white cars among 2,844,609 new passenger cars registered in 2023.
Measured: All new passenger cars registered in the calendar year. Method: Administrative count from the central vehicle register.
Caveat: Six colour groups are published and silver is not one of them; the declared colour is a broad group chosen at registration.
Source: Neuzulassungen von Personenkraftwagen in den Jahren 2014 bis 2023 nach ausgewählten Farben
Observed market dataModerate evidence· United Kingdom· 2025
SMMT reports grey at 27.62%, black at 22.98%, blue at 15.16%, white at 13.14% and silver at 6.30% of the 2,020,520 new cars registered in the United Kingdom in 2025.
Measured: All new cars registered in the calendar year.
Caveat: A trade association's release with no note on how colour is assigned; only the ten leading colours are printed.
Source: Grey in the fast lane as green powers up in Britain's top new car colours
Colourwise analysisStrong evidence
In Germany's registration counts the combined share of white, grey and black rises from 74.6% in 2014 to 78.8% in 2023.
Based on: Sum of the published white, grey and black counts divided by the published total of new passenger cars, for each year of the authority's 2014–2023 table.
Caveat: Silver is not a published group and is assumed to sit inside grey; the remainder is all colours outside the six listed.
Source: Neuzulassungen von Personenkraftwagen in den Jahren 2014 bis 2023 nach ausgewählten Farben
Colourwise analysisStrong evidence
Among passenger cars on the Dutch register that were first registered new in the Netherlands in 2025, 73.1% are grey, black or white and 7.6% are green.
Based on: Colourwise's query of the RDW open register on 6 October 2026: passenger cars whose first admission date equals their first Dutch registration date, counted by main colour and year.
Caveat: Cars still registered on the query date, not all cars registered in the year; the register has no silver category and changes daily.
Source: Open Data RDW: Gekentekende_voertuigen (registered vehicles)
Colourwise interpretationModerate evidence
A registration census and a paint supplier's regional estimate should be read side by side and never joined into one series, because they differ in population, method and colour categories at once.
Based on: Colourwise's comparison of the German, British and Dutch registry records with the DuPont/Axalta and BASF report series, as set out in the comparability notes of each record.
Reviewed 6 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.