Why does red car paint fade so badly

[waynne]

I thought we would have a thread that attempts to answer this question. Red paint seems to fade much more that other colours and I'd like to get my head around why this is.

My theories, the red paint formulation is different to other paints, perhaps red is a hard colour to reproduce. This different formulation leads to quicker paint degradation.

Another theory I have is in the way we see colours. Colour perception is caused AFAIK by objects absorbing all colours except for the one reflected (on the basis that white light is a mixture of all colours.)

Red is at the far end of weak light spectrum (infra red etc...) therefore all other colours are fully absorbed by the paint and only the weak light is reflected back to the viewer. This effectively means that red paint is absorbing the more damaging colours to a greater degree than any other?

Well I'm no scientist but I quite like my second theory! I wonder if it will hold up.

Feel free to tear it apart or add your own hypotheses.

[geraint13]

my theory is the same as waynnes first.
red paint is harder to copy than other colours on cars. red house paint doesnt fade as bad becuse it isnt in direct sunlight all the time. same theory applies to red bricks, they fade aswell due to weathering.
thunk red is just an awkward colour to keep fresh. unless you have a mate like master "a" who can bring a red car back to life with plenty of elbow grease and sum time.

[jarrus]

Well your second theory is correct, however i'm not sure how it well affect paint degradation,

I would have thought it was down to the chemical compound not being as resilient to sunlight,

but then again car paint is more advanced now so fade won't happen for years and so has the paint protectors (polish's and waxs, etc) becoming more advanced so I don't think this is a major problem and besides I would be happy to maintain my red colour on my car as this is my favourite colour for a car (my car isn't actually red, I was just saying.....)