Fading finishes were never a "problem" except with folks who don't get what's involved.
That's because what makes PRS colors reveal the wood so well necessarily involves photosensitive, organic stains and dyes. You want transparent beauty, you need certain stuff to achieve it, and the price is a certain amount of sensitivity to light.
Here's the deal: transparent stains and dyes are usually organic; opaque stains can be organic or inorganic. With a PRS, people tend to want to see the wood grain. So organic dyes and stains get used. But the wood grain shows through better.
There aren't any miracles to be had here. It's purely a matter of chemistry and physics.
If you want permanent colors, you need inorganic stain that is far less transparent, or you need to pick a color that's less photosensitive. Or you need a painted guitar.
If you want to show off the grain of wood, organic stains and dyes do this job. Certain colors, like blue, green and purple, fade more than others. Browns, reds, and yellows tend to fade gracefully.
You can minimize fading simply by keeping a guitar cased when not in use. The more light it sees, the greater the likelihood that the stains or dyes react to the light. Sometimes the reaction to a certain amount of light triggers a certain amount of chemical activity that continues even when the light source is removed.
My suggestion is to get a guitar whose tone and feel you like, and worry about more important stuff, like how you're going to put together a stash of money for your next guitar.
One of my Private Stocks is all blues, greens, and violets. It's gonna fade. Sounds incredible, plays great. It'll outlive me by hundreds of years, and sound great until it's eaten by worms.
So it goes.
