Paint correction is the art of removing paint defects from damaged clear coat.

It requires a lot of skill to be able to do it safely and you also have to always balance how much paint correction you’re doing, which is essentially removing damaged clear coat from the surface.

Before you ever start paint correction, you always measure the paint first. You always have to balance how much paint correction you’re going to do with how much clear coat the vehicle has.

The second step is to determine what pad, polish, and machine combination you’re going to use to get maximum paint defect removal. After you assess the paint and you determine if it needs a one or a two step, you do a test spot on the vehicle. Now, the test spot is roughly a two foot area where you determine your process. The process can be changed via your machine, the pad that you use, or the compound that you use. After that, you basically repeat the process over the entire vehicle to remove as much defects as you can.

After you do your paint correction, you have to check it over with bright lights to make sure that you got even paint correction. You’ll again measure the paint to make sure that you didn’t take off too much paint or if you can take off a little bit more paint if you still see defects in that area.

Then you can move on to your protection, which that can either be a standard hand-applied wax or it could be something like Ceramic Pro. It could even be a clear bra, depending on what kind of protection you’re looking for, but paint correction is easily the most skilled part of any Ceramic Pro Center. It takes years and years to learn how to do it properly. It takes a lot of experience. Paint correction is different from one area of Canada to another because, the environmental factors are different. There’s no formulaic standard to make it work exactly the same in each different place. That’s why the skill of each Ceramic Pro Center is so important. Each shop maintains the same high standard for their own region.

Factors that Affect Paint Correction

Location. One of the strongest benefits of Ceramic Pro Centers is that each shop has been a highly-skilled detailing shop in their respective areas for years. Since environmental factors are one of the largest things that affect paint — from the weather, salt stains, acidity, road de-icers — each shop has skill in their region. They know how much paint correction will be necessary, and what kind of coatings will be necessary to keep that correction looking good for as long as possible.

Amount of clear coat left. If a car has had its paint corrected before, or if it’s an older car, there may be not be as much clear coat left on a car. Industry trends are showing us that cars have less clear coat and thinner paint overall. An expert shop will always measure the clear coat and do a two-foot test spot to make sure that the method they are using is the best for your car.

Type of substrate. Another thing that changes your paint correction method is what type of substrate that you’re working on. The substrate is the type of material that the part of the car is made out of, including aluminum, steel, plastic, and so on. For example, if you’re working on an aluminum hood, then you move on a plastic bumper, you might have to change your polishing combination because the amount of defects that you remove will differ. When you’re polishing the panel, you’re applying heat to the area. On an aluminum panel, the heat dissipates much slower than it would on a steel panel, and on the bumper, which is plastic, it’s dissipating slower than on an aluminum panel, so you basically have to change either what you’re using or the procedure to give the paint correction process even results.

There’s a lot of other factors, such as how much weight you put on the machine, how slow or fast you go on the machine, what kind of machine you’re using, so it gets quite complicated on really how paint correction is done, but you essentially want to figure out two combinations of pad, polish, machine — one or two combinations to get you the most paint defect removal while still reserving enough paint for future paint correction.

Protecting your car after paint correction.

WAX. Wax is one option to protect your paint after polishing, or paint correction. There are many different types of wax, and it is the most temporary of options to protect the clear coat on your vehicle. Most high-quality waxes last between four and six weeks.
CERAMIC PRO. Ceramic Pro is a semi-permanent or permanent coating that protects your car. We have packages with warranties from six months to an entire lifetime warranty. In addition to protecting your car, it has excellent self-cleaning effects, so every time you wash your car, it comes out perfectly and takes much less time.
CLEAR BRA, also known as paint protective film (ppf). Clear bra is a great option for protecting your car because it also protects against rock chips (the only thing that Ceramic Pro does not protect against.) Our clear bra comes with a ten year warranty. There are many packages for how to wrap your car, from just the bumper and mirrors all the way up to wrapping your full vehicle.

Owners who want to get the best protection for the longest period of time often combine a clear bra application with a Ceramic Pro package.