...why so many bikes are such boring drab colours these days?

[mercalia]

Hi,
For me it has to be blue or green, I did hand paint a bike in my youth white.
Camo and titanium I could do to.
You only have to look at cars to see that colour the right colour can make or break The model.
Okay so anecdotal.
Yellow anyone

I have posted my yellow bike at the start of the thread, or if you mean cars we had a mini like this in Liquid Yellow:

Somebody drove into it as it was being driven down the street, when they pulled out from a petrol station on a bright sunny day. The driver of the other car said he didn't see it!

or you could have a car like this right from a kiddies picture book where cars have faces and speak? This one has nice rosey lips and bottom teeth

click to enlarge

[Mr Evil]

It's disappointing that technology has improved so much that customizing products for each user should be easier and cheaper than ever, and yet the improvements are instead put into mass production of a minimum of variants, and the general public seem quite happy with it like that.

Personally I've had bikes in all manner of colours, from plain to garish, and got around the lack of choice in car colours by respraying mine. My current preferred style is mostly plain, with bright colours used for highlights, thusly:

Whatever your favourite colour, it's in there somewhere.

[TrevA]

I like red bikes - below is my current Cannondale Caad 8. I also had a steel Langdale that was red and had my Holdsworth Professional sprayed red.

[foxyrider]

I'm frequently on here talking about the lack of colour and bling.
Black components on a bland grey bike with black wheels, spokes and tyres. Matt black and grey everywhere.
Why for goodness sake?
Where is the colour and the chrome and polished finishes?

Also why do girls have colours in their clothes, and blokes have boring black?

Bought, by mistake, a pair of lady's bib tights. The padding on the inside was a lovely purple/red colour.
Took them back and swapped them for a man's version. Identical in every way except that the padding was black.
Why for goodness sake?

A number of my pairs of bib tights have red or green pads.

mine too, Decathlon use different colours for different qualities of pad.

[Mick F]

Mine are DHB from Evans.
Padding is black for male, pinky purple for female.

Same tights, same design, different sizing, both black.

[foxyrider]

Grey paint is closest to grey primer so the paint can be thinner....

Likewise black is closest to carbon so paint can be lighter.

What carbon race bikes do the rest of the bike world follows!!

My Cannondale paint is painted white in thickness that can only be described like white radiator paint. I doubt you get a bike painted like that today. It's a pain to keep clean and chips easily but I'm past caring!

Cheers James

Well my carbon bike isn't grey or black!

I will admit that i do have 3 black bikes - none by choice, all by default as thats what they were - at least 2 of them are gloss and have varying degrees of colour relief, silver on one, white the other. Number 3 is matt black with no staying power, the rattle tin satin on the forks is much better than the factory finish.

Both my other bikes are red, post box red which might well be my default colour choice - if there is one.

[PT1029]

If you have rim brakes, I can recommend dark battleship grey, it is the same colour as the grey gunge that the brakes make when used in the wet, so the bike never looks that mucky in wet weather.
Also an easy modelling paint colour to get, though last time I tried, it was only available (in the shop at least) in matt.

[botty]

Embrace the bling. This is my daily ride and I have a 1952 Holdsworth in the same colour

[Mick F]

Embrace the bling. This is my daily ride and I have a 1952 Holdsworth in the same colour my bike.jpg

Lovely!

[francovendee]

Embrace the bling. This is my daily ride and I have a 1952 Holdsworth in the same colour my bike.jpg

Nice!

[niggle]

My theory that smaller bike/frame builders allow themselves to be more adventurous with design & colours seems to be confirmed by this completely mad version of On One's Space Chicken:

Fair play to them for pushing the envelope, but even I wouldn't buy that! OTOH the grey mettalic version does at least have some brighter contrasting colours that works reasonably well IMO:

[pwa]

I find myself slightly adrift in this thread because, with a few exceptions such as lurid green, I like most colours if they are done in the right way. I have admired grey paint jobs, and I have admired bright orange paint jobs. I'm not keen on very busy graphics on race bikes, which to me look a bit cheap, but there is nothing new in that. Poor taste paint jobs on race bikes were very much in evidence when I fist really noticed race bikes in the early eighties. Just too much going on. But so far as individual colours go, there are few that I actually don't like.

There is a too much grey in the world at the moment. Loads of people are painting their homes in battleship grey. I do like the colour on a bike, but perhaps I'd avoid it while it seems to be a fashion.

Nicely finished titanium has that clinical, clean look, and I like it. But if I were not so relieved to be free of paint worries, and if I were more driven by aesthetics, some panels of colour on a titanium bike could make it look even better.

[pete75]

Tiem was when almost all bikes were either black or Raleigh green. There's a lot more variety now and a very wide range of colours available. Look at this web page for example - it show the 50 plus different finishes available when you buy a Bob Jackson frame.

[pete75]

Its just these lacklustre times. Go back into the 60s and 70s and there was a kaleidoscope of colours in fashion, furnishing and cars.

Look at these Triumph Stags... motors of the 70s

P6290025.JPG

We have got really boring!

Al

You can't polish a turd Al. It doesn't matter what colour they painted a Stag it was still a badly designed and badly made object.

[reohn2]

I've just bought a silver coloured Ford S max.