Automotive Color Trends 2025 - 2026 from BASF

To determine automotive color trends, BASF Coatings designers analyze global trends every year and put together a color collection. Key elements of the Automotive Color Trends 2025 - 2026 are sustainability and innovation.

BASF Coatings' designers have unveiled the Automotive Color Trends 2025-2026. Titled "Driving the Proxy", the new collection explores how creative inspiration and influences can come from a variety of sources and act as "proxies" that dynamically shape design decisions in the automotive industry.

Sustainability and innovation are central elements of the collection. Some colors contain renewable or recycled raw materials, while technological developments, such as multi-color pigments or almost metallic liquid surfaces, create new visual subtleties. Overall, Driving the Proxy presents elegant effect colors in solid colors with smooth surfaces and subtle glitter effects. At the same time, the collection makes a transition to warmer, emotionally appealing colors such as reds, mauves and nuanced shades of brown. OEMs worldwide are drawing on the color expertise of BASF Coatings for the development of future models. The first colors from the collection could be seen on cars in as little as two years. From the total of 45 shades in the new collection, BASF Coatings' designers have highlighted three key regional shades for EMEA, Asia Pacific and the Americas that reflect specific cultural and technological developments.

Tasseract Blue is a vibrant blue with greenish and violet highlights created by advanced interference pigments. Inspired by geometric abstraction, it conveys a multidimensional surface experience that challenges one's perception and creates visual depth.

"We see that parallel dynamics such as climate change and social fragmentation are creating visible and symbolic gaps and changing social norms," says Mark Gutjahr, Global Head of Automotive Color Design at BASF Coatings. "In this context, Tasseract Blue represents a shift in perspective that we call 'Filling the Voids'. It offers a harmonious vision for automotive surfaces with inclusive, future-oriented solutions."

Phygital Magnetar is a warm, flowing metallic shade with bright white highlights. It reflects the duality of the region: unstoppable innovation on the one hand, a deep need for calm and clarity on the other. Using state-of-the-art two-layer technology, Phygital Magnetar combines physical and digital worlds with a liquid-metallic effect.

"Our inspiration was the growing discussion around a certain 'innovation fatigue' in the Asia Pacific region," explains Chiharu Matsuhara, Head of Automotive Color Design Asia Pacific at BASF Coatings. "With its calm, expressive surface, Phygital Magnetar creates a space where innovation becomes invisible and design quietly redefines the future."

Auxetic Neutral is a rich, culturally inspired brown shade that reinterprets neutrality as a bold design statement. A subtle glitter effect adds vibrancy and depth to the shade, creating a tactile, multi-dimensional surface. The color is influenced by both fashion and industrial design.

"Design today is less a question of individual authorship and more a collective statement," says Gutjahr. "Neutrality and even 'anonymous authorship' have become tools of inclusion, allowing diverse voices to coexist and shape identity together. Auxetic Neutral embodies these qualities by combining complexity and openness while remaining distinctive and memorable."

Year after year, the color designers at BASF Coatings analyze global trends in fashion, consumer behavior, technology and nature. These findings shape the Automotive Color Trends collection and create the basis for new concepts in color, surface and texture.

Automobile manufacturers worldwide use this expertise in the design and planning of their future models and are supported by BASF Coatings' digital and virtual color tools. One example of this is the color Bursting Blue, which was introduced in an earlier collection and has now established itself as a widely used series color (OM-10/25).