What’s the Worst Motorcycle Color? – Question of the Day
Orange you glad we asked?
What’s the worst motorcycle color?
We’re not just asking because KTM just sent out a press release with the image above to celebrate 30 years of Duke models, in all their orange glory. Personally, I don’t mind the Austrian brand's signature hue, but we’ve certainly heard more than a few gripes about it in the comments for reviews of tangerine-colored KTM over the years.
We’ve also seen more than a few complaints about Harley-Davidson’s new base color for 2024, “Billiard Gray”. Whether you just call it primer, or merely wonder if there even are any gray billiard balls, it is weird seeing it replacing Vivid Black as the standard Harley color.
That being said, is gray that egregious a color for a bike? As a shade, it's pretty innocuous. We see a lot of reds, whites and blues out on the roads, but not that many greens, except from Kawasaki. There aren’t a lot of yellow bikes out there, but it doesn’t look too bad on the Ducati Scrambler.
In the end, beauty is subjective, and that's especially true when it comes to motorcycle colors. Which is why it makes for a good Question of the Day. So, we ask again, what do you think is the worst motorcycle paint color?
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Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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Silver or gray is super ugly to me. You couldn’t dream up a more bland color and it’s the same shade as the asphalt. I suppose that works if you’re a chameleon.
Black bikes look good close up. Going down the freeway they are just black blobs. They all pretty much look the same. An all black bike hides the shape of the components. Any color of a monotone bike is boring. I paint all my bikes with contrasting colors and accents.