Virtual colour configurator shows forecast for auto industry

Clariant has released its new Automotive Styling Shades 2025 Trendbook, including an interactive digital version for the first time.

The much-anticipated Trendbook, published every two years, highlights how globalisation has made colour preference more uniform worldwide than it was 20 years ago, with white still the most preferred shade in 2020 rounding off 10 years of uninterrupted dominance. Yet, as people around the globe look for joy, beauty and cultural sharing after the impacts of the pandemic colour is back in the air.

“The 2025 edition is focused on ‘colour meets culture’, exploring the inspiration and emotion that colour brings to our lives and forecasting brilliant shades and metallic effects in a diverse range of colour families,” says Bernhard Stengel-Rutkowski, Technical Manager Automotive Coatings at Clariant. These are Daily Relaunch – with mood lifting hues for the office commute, Value-based Culture – gentle colours for a peaceful and sustainable co-existence on the planet, The Fast and the Curious – shades that shout open-mindedness and self-confidence, and Rainbow Bridge – bold colours that blaze a trail and refuse to follow the rules.

Pushing the boundaries of traditional formulation knowledge, Clariant’s organic pigments are helping to solve some of the coatings formulation challenges posed by new, disruptive technologies. These include how to improve near infra-red reflectance to make dark cars detectable by LIDAR technology, essential for the safety of autonomous vehicles, or the formulation of brilliant shades when metallic effect pigments are combined with colored organic pigments.

For the first time, Clariant is launching a virtual version of the Trendbook along with the brand-new online and interactive Car Color Configurator, offering customers a collection of 28 new trend shades for automotive coatings. The trend colours can be virtually selected and applied onto different car models, from a sports car to a family van, and viewed in settings that include neutral scenery, a sunset, an urban landscape or with infrared vision. This was made possible by scanning a painted panel and converting the data into a format which is compatible with common rendering software. The Car Color Configurator allows customers to collect their favourites in a personal brochure without the need to share personal data. 

With the launch of this cutting-edge tool Clariant has combined its pigment and colour formulation expertise with trend scouting and made those shades available digitally.