Why the colour of your EV could affect what you pay to lease it

It's an interesting shift, but here's the part that actually matters if you're choosing a car to lease: colour isn't just about how a car looks on your driveway. It plays a real role in what a car is worth when it comes to the end of a lease or finance agreement, and that can affect what you pay overall.

Why fleets favour neutral colours

According to VDG, silver, white and grey share a practical advantage: they're better at disguising the small scuffs, stone chips and swirl marks that build up over normal daily use. That means less paint correction needed before resale, and a car that looks closer to new for longer, both of which help protect its resale value.

Ben Hermer, Operations Director at VDG, put it simply: neutral colours combine the practical priorities of fleets with an aesthetic that happens to suit the higher-tech feel of modern cars.

The BMW iX5 pictured above is technically available in a rainbow of colours, though you won't see many of them on the roads. A niche shade like this acid yellow would almost certainly mean a factory order, with a wait time of weeks or months for a build slot, a real drawback if you're in a rush for a new vehicle rather than happy to wait for exactly the right spec. In-stock options tend to be neutral colours instead, simply because they're easier to sell on and less likely to put a buyer off, which keeps them moving quickly through dealer forecourts and lease providers alike.

What this means if you're leasing

If you're weighing up colour options on a new EV, it's worth knowing that a bolder colour choice can sometimes carry a small premium, either at the point of order or reflected in your monthly cost. Neutral shades tend to be the safer choice if resale value and predictable running costs matter to you, though not necessarily the most exciting one if you want your car to stand out.

As with most leasing decisions, it comes down to what you're optimising for. If you're leasing personally and want a colour you'll enjoy every day, that's a perfectly reasonable priority. If you're managing a fleet and thinking about total cost of ownership, going neutral is the more calculated choice.

Either way, it's a good reminder that even small decisions, like paint colour, can have a bigger impact on the numbers (and lead times) than people expect.

Colour preferences vary more by region than you might expect. Neutrals dominate everywhere, but the mix differs.

North America leans hardest into white at 31%, with blue notably stronger there (at 10%) than almost anywhere else.

Europe's picture is slightly different, and arguably closer to what we see on UK roads. Grey leads at 26%, just ahead of white at 25% and black at 22%, with silver holding a stronger 9% share and blue at 8%, both higher than the global average. Axalta doesn't break its figures down by individual country, so we can't say this applies to the UK specifically, but the European trend lines up closely with what VDG's data shows on British roads.

Asia tells a different story:
Build data still shows neutrals leading with white at 28% and black close behind at 26%, but it's the smaller categories that stand out, with yellow/gold, green, and shades like orange and purple all growing, something Axalta puts down to Asia's fast-expanding EV market, where bold, saturated colours are increasingly being used to help new brands build identity.

That last point is worth sitting with. We've already written about the rise of Chinese electric cars in the UK, a market that's grown from a rare sight to accounting for more than one in four new EVs sold in Britain in 2025. Brands like BYD, Omoda, Xpeng and Leapmotor are still relatively new names here, and one way newer brands often differentiate is through bolder styling and colour choices rather than the safe neutrals that established manufacturers rely on for resale value.

So could we see more colour on UK roads as Chinese EV brands grow their presence? It's a reasonable question rather than a certain prediction. Axalta's own data shows this pattern already playing out in Asia's home market, and newer entrants generally have less resale history to protect, meaning less pressure to stick to the neutral colours that established brands and fleets favour. Worth watching, though we'd stop short of calling it a certainty until the UK-specific registration data catches up.