So here’s a suggestion:
How about adding a default color (or color scheme) which the player can set up beforehand. Any design piece you add, will start in this color scheme.
In addition, in stead of always starting white, how about adding some default, reasonably looking, color schemes, and set up a randomizer which randomly picks one of those color schemes. This way, people with less fashion sense than some will at least have a bit better starting point than the bleary white.
Finally, you could also add, for example in the options, what the default color scheme, as detailed above, should look like, so someone who wants a line of black and blue ships can set up the colors once, then make a dozen ships, and then finally only needs to tweak the colors a bit.