A ceramic coating lasts for years, not weeks. That is exactly why the paint has to be right before it goes on.
A ceramic coating bonds to the clear coat and takes the wear instead of your paint. Rain, sap, dust off Highway 1 and the salt in the air this close to the water all sit on top of the coating rather than working into the paint.
What you see is depth. Corrected paint under a coating looks darker and glossier than it did new, and it stays that way instead of dulling off after a season.
Rain beads up and runs off instead of drying in place and leaving spots behind. Washing takes far less time and puts far fewer marks in the paint.
Sap, bird mess and road fallout land on the coating rather than eating into the clear coat. You have time to clean them off before they leave a mark.
Wax is gone in weeks. A coating holds the finish for years, so you pay for the correction underneath once instead of over and over.
Plenty of shops quote a coating and then add the correction on top. These prices are the whole job. The only difference between them is how far we take the paint before sealing it.
Wash, chemical decontamination, clay. Anything left bonded to the paint gets sealed under the coating permanently.
Gloss polish at minimum, enhancement or full correction where the paint calls for it. This is the step that decides what the car looks like for the next several years.
Applied panel by panel, levelled by hand, then left alone to cure. The car has to stay dry while it cures, and we tell you exactly how long that takes.
Because that is where the result comes from. A coating is a clear layer, and it makes whatever is under it permanent, so the money goes into making the paint underneath worth keeping.
Yes, and washing it badly will still put marks in the coating. But it washes faster, dries cleaner, and never needs waxing. A maintenance program is the easiest way to protect what you paid for.
Almost never. What actually happens is the coating gets buried. Road film, hard water minerals and traffic grime build up on top of it and fill the surface, so water stops beading and the car stops feeling slick. The coating is still there and still bonded. It just cannot do its job through the layer sitting on top of it.
That is what most people are describing when they say a coating failed. It is a maintenance problem far more often than it is a product or application problem.
A decontamination and reactivation service. The build-up gets stripped off and the coating surface is reset, which is a different job from a wash. You see the difference in the water the same day. It beads and sheets the way it did when the coating was new.
On a maintenance program this is handled on schedule, so the car never gets bad enough to need it as a rescue. That is the cheapest way to own a coated car.
New is not the same as flawless. Transport, dealer washes and lot prep leave marks in most new cars. A gloss polish first is still the right move, and it is the cheapest route on the table.
Yes. A garage or covered space is preferred for the coating and cure stage, and we will talk through what your space needs before the day.
Tell us the car and where it is parked, and we will point you at the option that fits it, not the most expensive one.
(831) 440-6897