There are some who say that a car's paint scheme says more about the driver than the car itself. This seems borne out by decades of customizers, some of whom can manage to make even a Pinto Wagons look sinister, while others have an outstanding talent for making even the coolest cars look outdated and boring. The most important part of choosing a paint scheme is to pick a theme that suits your car and personality, and stick to it.
While a monochromatic paint scheme can be a great way of updating older iron, there are a few important caveats to bear in mind. Bright colors, painted bumpers and painted grilles will make your car look like it just crawled out of 1984, so don't do it. Black, silver and white look good on any car but can be a little boring; only use these colors if your car has character lines interesting enough to compensate for the paint.
If you're going for instant evil, you could simply black out your entire car from stem to stern. Although the "spray and go" approach might be tempting, you're going to need some sort of contrast to make it interesting. Flat or suede black accent stripes will keep the theme while adding personality, and gun-metal gray wheels will help to offset the overwhelming darkness. Black-out paint-jobs generally tends to look best on big, intimidating cars.
One of the strongest movements in today's automotive market is suede (semi-gloss) or flat paint jobs. One of the coolest things about suede paint is that it looks good in almost any color, and can give any car an other-worldly look when applied to bright colors like yellow, red and blue. Suede earth-tones are classy and will give any street-rod an interesting "original paint" appearance.
Flat white looks cool on older muscle-cars but is equally at home on a customized pick-up. Don't even think about putting chrome trim or wheels on a car with flat paint in any color but white.
If your car hails from the era of Disco and the BeeGees, don't be afraid to fly your colors proudly. Look at the custom cars of the decade for inspiration in their psychedelic swirls and asymmetrical stripes, and then apply those same treatments with the colors of this millennium. If a full-body green-yellow-blue-gold custom paint job is a little over the top for you, think about applying those same shapes and themes in slight variations of the same color as part of a two-tone paint job.
Some customizers are currently experimenting with ghosted-in psychedelics, using only multiple coats of air-brushed clear with colored-pearl additive. The look is beautiful, elegant and retro at the same time.
