What it costs, and why

Our full price list, in public, so you can compare it against anything else you have been quoted.

Two things worth knowing before you read it. Coating a car properly means correcting the paint first, and correction is priced separately above because how much a car needs depends entirely on its condition. And a car in poor condition can need more than the listed job, in which case we tell you before we start rather than after.

If a smaller package gets you most of the result, we will say so before you commit to the larger one. That happens more often than people expect, particularly on cars going back on a lease or heading straight to sale.

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Five things, roughly in order of how much they matter.

1. The condition of the paint

This is the big one, and it is the one people underestimate. A coating takes a few hours. Correcting the paint underneath it can take days. Two identical cars in the same colour can differ by a thousand dollars purely because one has been through automatic car washes for five years and the other hasn’t.

It is also why correction is priced by the stage rather than by the car. We take paint depth readings and look at the defects under inspection lighting before telling you which one you need.

2. How many correction stages

A single-stage polish is one pass. A two-stage is a cutting step and then a refining step, roughly double the labour. A three-stage chases the last few percent for show cars and dark paint held to a high standard. Each step up is more hours, and hours are most of what you are paying for.

3. Size

A hatchback and a seven-seat 4WD are not the same job. More panels, more glass, more carpet, more leather, and on a big SUV the roof alone takes real time.

4. Colour

Black and dark metallics show every swirl, so they need more correction to reach the same visual standard, and they are the colours people most want corrected. White and silver hide a great deal.

5. The product on top

This is last on the list deliberately. The difference between a good sealant and a flagship ceramic coating is real, but it is a smaller share of the price than the preparation beneath it. A Gtechniq or System X coating on properly corrected paint is a different product from the same bottle sprayed over swirls.

If one quote is half the other, something is different. Usually it is one of these. Ask both detailers and the gap explains itself.

• How many correction stages are included, and is correction included at all?
• Is the car chemically decontaminated and clayed before any machine touches it?
• Are panels wiped down to strip polishing oils before the coating goes on?
• Which coating exactly, and what durability does the manufacturer state for it?
• Are the wheels coming off, or is it faces only?
• How many days will the car be there, and does the coating get a controlled cure?
• What is the aftercare, and is a maintenance wash included or extra?

A detailer who is proud of the answers will give them without hesitating.

A $150 “full detail” skips decontamination and claying, because those stages are slow and invisible in photographs. Washing a contaminated car and then machine polishing it grinds that contamination across the panel, which is how cars come back from cheap details with more swirls than they went in with.

That damage is not cosmetic in the trivial sense. Correcting it later means removing clear coat, and clear coat is finite. You pay twice, and the second time you have less paint to work with.

The same applies to a cheap coating. Apply one over uncorrected paint and the swirls are sealed in for the life of the coating, which on a good product is years. Removing a failed coating is its own job on top.

All major cards, and Afterpay if you would rather split a larger job across instalments. Coating packages are the ones people most often split, since correction and coating together is the biggest single spend on this list.