Car Design News & Ultrafabrics launch Colour, Materials & Finish (CMF) Trend Survey 2025

Colour, Materials & Finish (CMF) remains an essential emotional vocabulary by which vehicle designers, and in particular vehicle interior design departments, express their individual brand identity, differentiate themselves from the competition, and appeal to their target consumer base.

The Car Design News and Ultrafabrics Colour, Material & Finish (CMF) Survey 2025 has established itself as an annual litmus test for CMF within car design, but also casts a critical eye towards the future of car design, imparting authoritative expert insight, whilst also giving back to the car design community.

Key findings:

Colour trends 

Earthy tones were the dominant colour trend for vehicle interiors 

Earthy tones were clearly the dominant colour trend and (followed in a distant second place) Achromatic hues were the leading trends globally, but also across most regions and design roles. 

Materials trends 

Sustainability & Integrated technology dominate materials innovation 

Within the area of materials innovation, the leading response was Sustainability closely followed by Integrated technology (touchscreens, smart surfaces, HUD), and in third place was Lightweighting. There was some variance by region and design role, but the same three main issues predominated. 

Cultural and consumer influences  

There were clearcut generational differences with interior preferences 

The Baby boomers strongly prioritised Comfort and Traditional Materials. Generation X had more of a balance of priorities such as Comfort , Minimalism, Traditional Materials, Sustainable Materials, and Smart Surfaces / Tech Integration. For Millennials, there was a stronger bias towards Sustainable Materials, and Smart Surfaces / Tech Integration. For Generation Z, they strongly prioritised Smart Surfaces / Tech Integration, and Sustainable Materials. There was some small variation by region, most notably Japan, but in terms of design roles, they followed the global picture with a clear generational divide. 

Download a 15 page summary of the survey’s findings here.

Watch our interview with UltraFabrics discussing the results of the survey at our Car Design Dialogues Milan event.

Want to see the full findings of the survey? Become a CDN Premium subscriber below to access the full 35 page report.