The conservation or renovation quandary

By way of background, this Cyclingtips article lists three general approaches to approaching classic road bikes. NB: I'm not sure if the term restoration is mainly limited to restoring components, or if it is usually understood to include repainting.

When it comes to rescuing a classic road bike, there are three schools of thought. The first is to treat is as an artefact. The second is to turn back time by reconditioning and restoring the bike to its former glory. And the third is to renovate and update it to suit the modern era.

While there are good arguments for each approach, the divide that separates them is sometimes immense. There are times when devotees will go to war to defend their ideology, especially when it concerns a much loved and revered brand, like Bianchi. Indeed, one misstep can be viewed as a desecration.

The amount of heritage that the brand and perhaps a particular model has might sway you towards preservation. In road cycling, my primary discipline, heritage often arises through affiliation with a prominent team or rider. For example, when Eddy Merckx was racing with Molteni, the team's color was orange. When Merckx retired and launched his own line of bikes, many of them were in the same shade of orange as an homage, and I bet many owners of steel Merckxs would prefer to preserve the original scheme. Bianchi's signature color is celeste (a shade of green), so the color is inseparable from the brand even though some Bianchis have come in other main colors. Mapei, a very successful Classics team, had a distinctive paint scheme, and they raced on Colnagos, so I bet most people who bought a Colnago in a Mapei scheme would prefer to restore the bike to that scheme.

Another factor that might lend some objectivity towards a decision to restore to an original paint scheme and perhaps original parts is the frame's value at the time of sale. I think that if given an entry-level Bianchi from the 1980s, most observers would not insist on repainting it to the original scheme, or even to a classic Bianchi paint scheme. In the future, I'd speculate that the sport's degree of technical advancement might make people less likely to seek a restoration to older paint or components. I also suspect there may be cultural changes that affect a desire to preserve bicycles in their original configurations. You don't mention your age, but you did mention that your neighbors are in their 50s and 60s. You also don't mention your country, but I would speculate that the desire for preserving heritage bicycles is probably lower among younger cyclists in the US than among older US and European cyclists. I don't have knowledge about where younger European cyclists might fit in; in general, my impression is that Europeans may value tradition more than Americans, but that could be cultural stereotyping.

For the record, the Cyclingtips article discussed how one shop owner came into possession of a Bianchi Specialissima X-4, made from 1986 to 1992, and rode by Moreno Argentin and his team. I believe the paint scheme was standard Bianchi celeste, as documented by Velo Aficionado.

The owner elected to paint the bike blue, as shown below. He actually received conflicting advice on restoring the original paint versus choosing a new paint scheme, but part of what swayed him was that he acquired the bike with paint in poor condition. He stated that if the bike had been in "pristine" condition, he would consider changing the paint scheme to be "sacrilege".

In a different article, Matt Wikstrom of Cyclingtips documents the process of restoring an older frameset, in his case a Concorde Squadra. I don't believe he repainted the bike, even though there were paint chips and the clear coat had degraded. He did update it to modern components. Some people may prefer to source vintage components. However, finding ones of the correct period can be involved and pricey. Finding new old stock (NOS) versions can be even more so. In yet another article, an unnamed Cyclingtips writer documented a limited Colnago C35. It mentioned that paint restorers can take the approach of repainting an older frame entirely, or of doing more limited restorations to the finish (e.g. touch up chips).

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A digression on Bianchi "celeste"

In Italian, the word "celeste" may mean something more like pale or sky blue, as documented here. The word, after all, shares an etymology with "celestial", and celeste refers to the color of the heavens. There may be multiple origin stories for how Bianchi came across its signature color. Two are documented in this Bicycling article. Thus, it's not 100% for certain that you or your painter would reproduce the 'correct' shade of Bianchi celeste for a specific year.

Moreover, the actual shade may have varied over the years. My understanding is that the color called British Racing Green (which originated in automotive racing, but which some bikes have received) may have the same problems, and it may be hard for painters to reproduce the exact shade. My understanding, from conversations with framebuilders, is that the type of primer used and the number of coats of paint applied can influence the final color.