“Special effect pigments that provide brilliance and ‘pop’ can help to create a look that stands out among the sea of color monotony, and appeal to those consumers who wish to stand apart from the crowd,” he adds. “While neutral colors such as white, black, and silvers still dominate most of the automotive color palette, deep, rich, highly chromatic blues, greens, oranges, and reds have begun to find their place in the automotive world as well,” says Jason Kuhla, manager of technical service & product application with Silberline Manufacturing. Effect pigments are the fastest growing segment of the high performance pigment market, and in 2015 were present in 70% and 65% of automotive colors for new builds in the Americas and Europe, respectively, according to Jane Harrington, manager of color styling with PPG Automotive OEM Coatings. Creating a Unique LookĬoatings formulators work directly with pigment suppliers to develop and commercialize new specialty effect pigments to generate exciting color spaces that accentuate the bodylines of new vehicles. Pigments also need to provide the same appearance in coatings with thinner and/or fewer layers while exhibiting increased durability. High sparkle finishes and intensely chromatic colors on car bodies and mirror-like finishes on interior components are increasing in popularity and driving the use of glass flakes, colored aluminums, and aluminum pigments with a much finer particle size. Shifts in customer color and appearance preferences drive the use and development of effect pigments, as do developments in coatings technology and application processes. That is certainly true in the automotive industry, where they are used in coatings applied to both the interior and exterior of vehicles. Regardless of the end-use application, special effect pigments provide a differentiated appearance. By Cynthia Challener, CoatingsTech Contributing Writer
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