@Madpig; welcome to the forum
Colour choice is a very personal thing and one person’s favourite colour will be another person’s least favourite, so if your asking for advice on which colour you should choose, you’re likely to get a multitude of different responses. Also, VW’s colour palette isn’t particularly exciting either, so not too many colours to choose from.
When I’m buying a new car, I consider the following in relation to paint colour;
Light or dark colour? A dark colour is harder work to keep clean and IMO requires more effort. Dark colours also show scratches, paint chips and swirls more than lighter colours. If you’re time poor, or not prepared to invest the time in keeping your car looking good, then a dark coloured car might not be the best choice.
Who will wash it? If you entrust your car washing to the £5 hand wash places or automatic car washes, then it’s likely to be inflicted with swirl marks due to poor washing techniques used, and swirl marks will be more visible on a darker colour. If you wash your car yourself, then whatever the colour, adopting a careful washing technique will help minimise paintwork swirls.
Colour matching; if you’re unfortunate enough to need any bodywork or paint repairs, is it an easy colour to match? Historically, light metallic colours (such as silver) or solid reds were difficult to get an accurate colour match. This might not be such a problem now with the use of spectrophotometer paint matching technology.
It’s always worth having a look in the used cars section of VW’s website as there’ll be a good selection of nearly new GTI Golfs (with photos) there in a variety of colours, so you’ll be able to see what each colour looks like ‘in the metal’. If I was buying a new GTI, my shortlist of colours in order of preference would be Pure White, Indium Grey, Isaac Blue or Tornado Red.
Good luck with your colour choice.