The Ocean in Motion: Aurora Blue Metallic is Nissan’s Newest Paint Color

While neutral tones dominate the market, Nissan offers a vibrant, brand-new hue echoing nature

Neutral car colors are massively popular. For decades, paint colors have been trapped in grayscale. About 80% of today’s vehicles are some shade of gray, silver, white or black – up from 60% in 2004¹. Meanwhile, blue vehicles accounted for just 9% of sales in 2024². In a world where people crave individuality – custom sneakers, personalized playlists and a return of bold colors in pop culture – why are most cars colorless?

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Neutral car colors are massively popular. For decades, paint colors have been trapped in grayscale. About 80% of today's vehicles are some shade of gray, silver, white or black – up from 60% in 2004. Meanwhile, blue vehicles accounted for just 9% of sales in 2024. In a world where people crave individuality – custom sneakers, personalized playlists and a return of bold colors in pop culture – why are most cars colorless? Nissan is bucking the trend – offering a brand-new blue for 2025. Debuting on the all-new 2025 Murano, Aurora Blue Metallic is the perfect fit for the redesigned crossover's crisp lines and muscular rear haunches. (Photo: Business Wire)

Nissan is bucking the trend – offering a brand-new blue for 2025. Debuting on the all-new 2025 Murano, Aurora Blue Metallic³ is the perfect fit for the redesigned crossover’s crisp lines and muscular rear haunches.

Yasuhito Oba, a color designer in Nissan’s Advanced Design Department, specializes in creating colors for the North American market, which is the primary target for Murano. Oba was a key player in developing the new paint – a process that takes over two years. He said that just like the rest of the all-new Murano’s design, Aurora Blue Metallic was inspired by nature.

“The Murano name comes from an island in Italy, so something inspired by the ocean made sense,” Oba said. “This color shares shades of blue found in the sea.”

Creating an all-new color is a complex process, especially for one with as much depth as Aurora Blue Metallic. Designers create countless versions of the color to get it just right. They make samples and see how they look in a wide variety of light conditions, on different materials, and during different times of day. Look closely, and you’ll see Aurora Blue Metallic features greenish-blue highlights and reddish shades. Oba explained that to achieve this, designers added two special pigments to the paint.

“A blue aluminum flake enhances the depth of the blue, while a color-shifting flake brings out reddish shades,” he said.

Indeed, the paint looks remarkably different depending on the time of day, sunlight, its location on the vehicle and the viewing angle. Midday in the sunshine, it appears as a bright blue. In the evening, however, the blue transforms into a deep and dreamy shade.

“Even in dark conditions, it has nuance,” Oba said. “It looks like an intense, dark blue – again, reminiscent of the ocean.”

Oba’s team in Japan collaborated with Nissan Design America (NDA) to ensure the color-shifting elements in the paint looked correct at all angles. The NDA team then traveled to Nissan’s assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee to validate the paint’s appearance on pre-production units.

When creating the 2025 Murano, Nissan designers worked closely with engineers to shrink gaps between body panels and create a more seamless, high-quality appearance. Aurora Blue Metallic helps emphasize that attention to detail.

“It works really well to enhance that uniform look – on both the sharp and smooth lines in the bodywork,” Oba said.

Murano offers available features like climate-controlled massaging front seats, 64-color interior ambient lighting and 21-inch wheels. The color team wanted Aurora Blue Metallic to emphasize those upscale components.

“We wanted to provide a premium yet light impression,” Oba said.

Aurora Blue Metallic is just the latest example of how Nissan is moving to provide drivers with options that defy convention. In fact, every vehicle sold in the U.S. is available in a shade of blue.

“Some are deep, some are light – but each model has an option,” Oba said. “It was important for us to offer customers choices beyond the norm.”

In addition to Aurora Blue Metallic, the 2025 Murano is available in 12 colors, including two-tone options that feature a contrasting black roof.

Much like the northern lights, Aurora Blue Metallic looks like it’s constantly changing color. It’s an effect that took years of refinement, but Oba says it was time well spent.

“We wanted to remind people of the magic moments in nature. This color does just that,” he said.

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¹ Source: iSeeCars study, 2023

² Source: Kelly Blue Book, 2024

³ Aurora Blue Metallic is an extra-cost option on Murano SL and Platinum grades.

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