Clariant forecasts colour formulations synergising with new mobility trends

Clariant, a focused and innovative speciality chemical company, links past and future in the 2021-2023 Automotive Styling Shades Trendbook.

The new guide predicts subdued alongside lively colour surprises to match the unprecedented changes impacting mobility in the coming decade.

Launched at the European Coatings Show, the latest edition of Clariant’s popular colour inspiration and support resource also takes a bold step in terms of convenience and content to capture the imagination of its strong audience of followers within the automotive paint and coatings industry, designers and trend analysts at OEMs.

Content-wise, viewers explore a historical journey of how and why colour in cars has changed over more than a century, before traveling into the future to discover the influence of shifting mobility trends on colour preferences for 2021-2023.

Bernhard Stengel-Rutkowski, Senior Global Technical Marketing Manager at Clariant, explained: "Recalling the car colours of the past reveals technology leaps, long-term trends and correlations that help us to make more plausible predictions about the future.

"Never before, however, did these predictions have to take into account such a staggering degree of disruption.

"Business models that have been valid for more than a century must cope with an unprecedented plethora of changes.

"Electrification and digitalisation, urbanisation, autonomous driving, car sharing, even totally new ways of driving on and above the ground, are likely to have an important effect on colour in cars.”

Challenging traditional formulation knowledge and taking advantage of synergies between new effect pigments and Clariant’s organic pigments, the trend shades for the coming years are not only nice and colourful but tackle on-going obstacles in coatings formulation, too.

For example, how to make dark cars detectable by LIDAR technology, how to create a colour travel effect which works on white, or how to simulate a fluorescence effect under a UV-absorbing clear coat.

Clariant’s future colour selections play with this high-speed movement towards a more urban and digital tomorrow.

Energetic fresh colours leap off the page while other consumers will seek comfort in more understated hues.

As an added extra, 2021-2023Automotive Styling Shades Trendbook recognises the industry’s most widely-used red pigment – Pigment Red 254 – and the return of red shades since the turn of the millenium.

The in-depth feature coincides with Clariant’s pioneering launch of a more environmentally-compatible version of the pigment based on the renewably-sourced material bio-succinic acid.

Samples coated with original paint in all the colour shades complete the new Trendbook.

"Clariant’s colour know-how is highly appreciated by paint suppliers to the automotive industry, as well as designers and trend scouts of industries which you wouldn’t relate to cars at all,” said John Dunne, Head of Business Unit Pigments at Clariant.

"As one of the few pigment producers spearheading trend colour forecasting for this industry, our interpretations of how the changing world and emerging technologies will influence consumer colour preferences in the next decade has become a solid base of inspiration and business decisions for our customers.”

To download a digital copy of the 2021-2023Automotive Styling Shades Trendbook visit www.clariant.com/automotivetrendbook.