What is Ceramic Paint Protection
This section of our site is to help our potential new clients to more understand ceramic coating for car paintwork, how it is designed and how it works as a paint protection product for your car.
What is Ceramic Coating ?
Ceramic coating products, without going into too much detail are effectively a chemical made substance that form a sacrificial glass like coating over your cars paintwork. Utilizing what is known as nanotechnology, they bond to the paintwork on a molecular basis as opposed to just forming a layer over the paint as a traditional car wax would.
What are the benefits of Ceramic Paint Protection ?
Ceramic coating forms a “hydrophobic” waterproof protective layer. Over your car paintwork, repelling water, dirt and airborn pollutants away, preventing them from bonding to the paintwork causing it to oxidise and fade.
Due to its hydrophobic qualities, your car takes longer to get dirty and also becomes incredibly easier to clean and and maintain. The semi-permanent glass like finish, removes the need to wax your car regularly.
If you were to take a cross reference of your cars untreated paintwork, this is what it would look like. Dirt particles fill up the swirl marks and scratches and bond directly to the paintwork, making it difficult to wash, causing more imperfections and dulling the natural finish to the car.
Prior to applying the ceramic coating the paintwork is polished to remove the peaks and troughs caused by the scratches and swirl marks, this brings out the natural high gloss shine to the paintwork. The ceramic coating is then applied which forms a tough and more scratch resistant barrier locking in the shine, the coating then actively works to push away dirt and airborne contaminants, preventing them from bonding to the paintwork making it much easier to clean.
A video showing the hydrophobic qualities of our ceramic coating on a Rolls Royce Phantom
What ceramic coatings can and can’t do !
Lets put right some of the myths about ceramic coatings
Most modern ceramics cure off to hardness of around 9H, giving it a similar scratch resistance for example to glass. As amazing and state of the art as these products are, they don’t in effect make your car bulletproof. We’re fully aware of the video’s floating around social media making unrealistic claims of what certain ceramic products can do, the simple truth is they wont prevent stone chips, dents and scuffs in your paintwork.
Its simply a question of physics, for example, if 2 substrates are rubbed together, the denser substrate will cut into the less denser substrate.
This also applies to car ceramic coatings. With the introduction of water based paints, which are notoriously soft compared to the solvent based paints of old. Ceramic coatings are a far denser product than the modern paint finish on your car, therefore when applied they give more resistance to scratching and damage compared to an unprotected paint finish.
So that bramble bush that you have no choice but to drive through going down that tight country lane one night will cause much less damage to the ceramic coating than what it would do to unprotected paintwork but because the ceramic coating works as a “sacrificial” layer as such, commonly it’s a lot less expensive a repair job to put right over unprotected paintwork.
Does ceramic coating make your car shiny ?
This is a good question that we get asked regularly, the truth is on their own, No they wont! They are invariably a paint protection product, yes some brands of ceramic coatings (including what we use) do contain glossing agents, so will enhance the finish somewhat, But they won’t give you a glossy paint finish on their own. If they’re applied directly onto a scratched or faded paint surface then the only thing you’ll achieve is to seal in that scratched or faded paint surface.
Preparation of the paintwork surface is essential prior to ceramic coating, hence why we always machine polish the paintwork first prior to every application, even on our new car ceramic paint protection service.
Obviously a new car needs less initial preparation compared to a used car due it it having less imperfections.
With a used car, before applying a ceramic coating, we have to follow a more intense process called paint correction. The paint correction process works to remove all the scratches, swirl marks and imperfections prior to application, bringing the paintwork back to a natural high gloss finish, The Ceramic coating is then used to seal and protect the finish.
For more information on our paint restoration process please see our What is paint correction page.
Protect your vehicles paintwork with the latest state of the art Ceramic Coating technology.
A 1 day process to bring the gloss back to your paintwork and finished for protection with our state of the art ceramic coating.
A minimum 3 day process to remove all scratches, swirl marks and imperfections, restoring your paintwork to a natural deep gloss shine. Finished for protection with our state of the art ceramic coating.
For those who insist on the best, 5-6 days of detailing for the paintwork , engine and suspension. The ultimate service for your car.
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins
Error: No connected account.
Please go to the Instagram Feed settings page to connect an account.