Not every scratch needs a panel shop

Run a fingernail lightly across the scratch, perpendicular to it.

If your nail glides over, the damage is in the clear coat. There is a good chance it polishes out completely, and that is a detailing job rather than a body shop one.

If your nail catches, the scratch has gone through the clear coat into the colour or the primer beneath. No amount of polishing brings that back, because there is nothing left to level down to. That needs filling and paint.

It is a crude test and it is right most of the time. The useful part is that it stops you paying a panel shop for something a polish would have fixed, and stops you paying us to attempt something only paint can solve.

Do it in daylight and take a photo at an angle where you can see the scratch clearly. Direct sun is ideal, because that is the light that shows damage honestly.

Modern automotive paint is layered, and which layer the damage has reached decides everything.

On top is the clear coat, a transparent protective layer that carries the gloss. It is thin, measured in microns, and it is what every polish, swirl and light scratch lives in.

Beneath that is the base coat, which is the colour. Below that a primer, and then the panel itself.

Correction works by removing a microscopic amount of clear coat until the surface is level with the bottom of the scratch. That only works while the scratch is still within the clear coat. Once it has cut through to colour, levelling would mean removing the rest of the clear coat off the whole panel, which is not a repair, it is damage.

Clear coat is also finite and does not grow back, which is why we take depth readings before working an area hard. More on how correction works.

Car park scuffs and paint transfer

Another car’s paint or a bollard leaving a coloured mark on your panel. This one surprises people, because it looks dramatic and often is not. Much of what you are seeing is the other car’s paint sitting on top of yours, and a good proportion of it lifts off entirely. What is left underneath is frequently a light clear coat scratch.

Swirls and wash marring

Fine circular scratches across the whole panel rather than one line. Almost always clear coat, and almost always fully correctable. This is the most common damage on any car and the most satisfying to remove.

Bird dropping and sap etching

Not a scratch but a chemical burn, where acid has eaten into the clear coat and left a dull ring or crater. Caught early it polishes out. Left through a summer it can etch deep enough to need paint.

Trolley and key scratches

Usually through the clear coat, often to primer, and usually a paint job. Sometimes the very shallowest end of one improves noticeably, but we would not promise it.

Sanding marks from a previous attempt

Someone has gone at it with a compound and a rag, or worse a rotary they were unfamiliar with, and left a hazed patch or a hologram pattern. These are correctable, and they are why we would rather look before you experiment.

Almost everyone searching this is really asking one question, so here is a straight answer. These are indicative Sydney market ranges gathered from published guides, not our quotes, and they cover both polishing work and panel repair because most scratches turn out to be one or the other.

• Minor surface scratches in the clear coat generally run about $120 to $200.
• A deeper scratch on a single panel typically sits between $200 and $400.
• Damage across multiple panels commonly lands in the $400 to $800 range.
• Scratches through to primer or metal are usually $300 to $600 per panel.
• A full panel respray starts around $800 and can pass $1,500.

The average scratch repair in Sydney sits somewhere around $350 to $550, and most jobs are finished within a few hours.

Which of those are us

The first two lines are detailing work. If the damage is in the clear coat we remove it by machine polishing, and the result is genuinely gone rather than filled.

The last two are panel repair, and we are not a panel shop. Once a scratch is through to colour or primer it needs filling and paint, and no amount of polishing changes that. We will tell you when you are in that territory and you can go straight to someone who does it, rather than paying us to improve it slightly first.

What decides your number is which category the damage falls in, which is exactly what the fingernail test tells you in about ten seconds.

Figures above are indicative Sydney market ranges collected from publicly published price guides and are not a quote from us. Every panel is different.

Being clear about this is the point of the page.

Anything through to colour or primer needs paint, not polish. Deep gouges, panel creases and dents are body shop work. Cracked or flaking clear coat, which shows as a peeling patch usually on a roof or bonnet, cannot be polished either. That is clear coat failure and the panel needs respraying.

We would rather tell you that in a message before you book than after you have paid for a day of work. If a panel shop is the answer, we will say so, and we can do everything around it so the car presents properly once the repair is done.

Equally, we will not chase a deep scratch by cutting hard at one spot. Burning through the clear coat turns a scratch into a respray, and that is a considerably worse outcome than a scratch you can only see in direct sun.

Plenty of light scratches genuinely do come out with a decent polish, a soft pad and patience, and there is nothing wrong with having a go. Two things are worth knowing first.

Scratch remover pens and coloured touch-up products mostly fill rather than remove. That is fine as a stopgap, but the filler washes out and it can make later correction harder because the residue has to come out of the scratch first.

The damage from a rushed attempt is usually worse than the original. A rotary polisher in unfamiliar hands generates heat quickly, and burning through clear coat on an edge takes seconds. Holograms from an aggressive pad are their own correction job.

If in doubt, send the photo first. It costs nothing and the answer might be that you can fix it in an afternoon.