Best Red Coffee Makers

Red is a decision. Nobody buys a red coffee maker by accident, and around thirty machines here offer one, which is more than most people expect and fewer than the category as a whole.

Almost always enamel or gloss over metal

Red is difficult to achieve in plastic without looking cheap, so it tends to appear on the machines that can carry a painted metal body - stand mixers, retro-styled drip makers, enamelled kettles and stovetop pots. That is good news for durability. A baked enamel finish is tougher than any plastic and will outlast the mechanism underneath it.

It fades in direct sun, and it chips

Red pigment is the least lightfast of the common appliance colours. A red machine on a south-facing counter will shift toward orange over years rather than months, but it will shift. Enamel also chips rather than scuffs: a knock that would mark a black machine takes a flake out of a red one, and the metal underneath shows through white or grey.

Match the red before you buy

There is no standard red. Post-box, burgundy, cherry, matte oxblood and the bright orange-reds sold as red all live in this family, and two of them side by side look like a mistake. This is the colour where judging from a photograph matters most, because the word tells you almost nothing.