What is Paint Correction?
Paint correction is the process of removing imperfections in the paints surface by leveling out the clear coat to reveal a flat, scratch free, mirror like finish. Sounds complicated? Let's dive into more detail!
When it comes to modern day vehicles, manufacturers paint cars in a three layer process. Primer, Base coat (Color), and clear coat. When talking about paint correction we want to specify this process is mainly focusing on the clear coat layer. The clear coat on your vehicle is a layer that protects the color coat from damaging, and give your paint that glossy finish. Although, the clear coat layer can still get damaged. As you drive your vehicle on a day to day basis, it gets exposed to the sun, road grim, rocks, brake dust, and all of these substances can be harmful to the clear coat.
As a result this may cause the clear coat to fade or obtain imperfection such as scratches, swirl marks, and etching. These can all deteriorate the clear coat causing it to fail.
Apart from the damage the natural elements and road debris can cause, some imperfections are created by washing techniques. You will always hear a professional detailer recommend that you do NOT go through a car wash that has brushes. regardless of how "soft" the company may claim the brushes are. Overtime, after washing hundreds of vehicles, those brushes will collect dirt and debris from a previous car. Which will then transfer onto your vehicle while washing, induces swirls and scratches.
So, how do we fix these swirls and scratches and restore a vehicles paint? The paint correction process. There are different stages to the paint correction process, which is determined by the vehicles paint condition as well as how much clear coat is measured on the vehicle. You might hear detailers refer to a "2 stage" or "3 stage" paint correction. Basically the more stages, the more in depth the correction is. Therefore if your vehicle has heavy defects, swirls, and etchings, a 2 or even 3 stage correction would be necessary to remove those defects. Although, you have to understand that there is only a limited amount of clear coat on a vehicle. You can only polish a vehicle so many times and so heavily before you may cause permanent damage to the clear coat.
As a consumer your job may just be to understand that if your vehicle clear coat is measuring on the lower end, your detailer only has so much to work with and not every deep scratch may come out. It's simply just too risky. As detailers, we should be taking every precaution in measuring the clear coat to see what is attainable. As well as educating our clients on what is a realistic expectation on the results that can be achieved.
To break down on how the paint correction process is done. It starts with getting you vehicle thoroughly washed, decontaminated and prepped. This may include a strip wash, bug and tar remover, an iron remover, and clay bar treatment. Once the wash prep is completed, your detailer will use a polisher paired up with the correct pad and polish combo to tackle each stage of the correction process. Depending on the condition of the vehicle, experienced detailers may even wet sand certain areas to get the best possible results.
finding the perfect correcting combination is also to ensure you get the best possible results while sacrificing the least amount of clear coat.
Once the correction process is completely, a form of protection is always recommended. Whether you are putting a polymer sealant, wax, or ceramic coating to top it off. You always want to have something to protect and maintain the work that was just done.
Overall the paint correction is an ideal way to restore and refinish the exterior of your vehicle, bringing back a vehicle that may be oxidized, swirled and scratched. To that factory, glossy and eye candy finish. Before we end off this article there are a few pointers that we want to briefly touch on.
1.Cost
Paint correction is a very thorough and labor intensive service, you can't go in with the mindset that you are going to get your vehicle back to showroom finish for a couple hundred dollars. Depending on how in depth of correction may be needed, expect to pay more for each stage. Here at Refined Appearance our single stage polish starts at $400 for a regular size sedan and can quickly make it's way up into the thousands depending on the level of correction as well as vehicle size.
2.Washing Maintenance
After paying a detailer a large amount of money to remove all the defects, the last thing you want to do is, wash your car incorrectly and induce another round of swirls and scratches. It is always recommended that you hand wash your vehicle, but we understand living here in Canada that's not always possible. If you chose to take your vehicle through an automatic car wash, just make sure that it is TOUCHLESS! There are plenty of companies that offer a touchless service, so if you care for your vehicles paint, that is your best option.
When hand washing your vehicle you still have to be cautious with your technique. We will write another article covering proper washing techniques in the near future. But just brief point, you want to make sure you are using a microfiber wash mitt, two bucket method, and washing in straight lines. This will ensure you minimize the amount of possible swirls.
We hope this article was informative and added value to your detailing knowledge. We are always open to feedback and if you have a specific topic or question you want us to cover feel free to comment! We'd appreciate if you shared this article with all your friends to spread the knowledge of our blog.
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