FAQs

Protecting and preserving your vehicle’s paintwork is crucial to maintain its value.

Paint correction helps ensure that your investment vehicle retains its pristine condition, making it a wise investment in the long term.

Paint correction is meticulous process that involves restoring the exterior paintwork to its original or near-original condition.

Over time, a vehicle’s paint can accumulate various imperfections, such as swirl marks, scratches, water spots, oxidation, and other defects that detract from its appearance. Paint correction aims to address these issues and enhance the overall look of the vehicle.

Multi-stage paint correction involves multiple stages of machine polishing, removing 80-95% of minor to moderate paint defects.

Single-stage paint correction involves one stage of machine polishing, removing 50-80% of minor to moderate paint defects.

Each type of coating differs in longevity, shine, and durability.

Carnauba wax, naturally derived from carnauba palm leaves, provides the most basic level of protection. When applied, carnauba wax enhances your vehicle’s natural paint color by increasing color depth and richness, ideal for creating gloss and a radiant shine. Carnauba wax, with its one to three month lifespan, is not as durable as synthetic sealants or ceramic coatings.

Synthetic sealants, also known as “polymer wax,” is produced from manufactured ingredients. Sealants differ from wax not only by its enhanced longevity, but by chemically bonding to your paint’s outer layer, providing greater protection and longevity. While sealants may last between six months and one year, it does not offer the same level of clarity and shine as carnauba wax, and does not provide the same level of protection as a ceramic coating.

Ceramic coating, like sealants, create a semi-permanent chemical bond with your paint. Quality ceramic coatings are derived from silicon dioxide (SiO2), the same ingredient used in manufacturing glass and ceramic. A ceramic coating is the most durable exterior coating available on the market today, and can last up to five years with proper maintenance. With a ceramic coating, your paint becomes much easier to clean and impervious to most environmental contaminants. By choosing to apply a ceramic coating, your vehicle paint exhibits phenomenal hydrophobic properties as a result of its glass-like shell. Ceramic coating application should only be installed by a professional.

As you drive your vehicle, your paint will naturally collect “fallout.” From pollen to iron particles, fallout becomes embedded in your vehicle’s paint, further increasing the likelihood of scratching or marring paint while washing.

Chemical decontamination is the process of removing ferrous fallout from your vehicle’s paint. Chemicals are applied to the paint to react with iron (III) oxide particles, converting it to iron thioglycolic oxide, a water soluble form which can be washed away from paint.

Mechanical decontamination is performed using a clay bar, physically removing leftover non-ferrous contaminants embedded in your paint. Clay bar is gently moved across the surface of your paint, lifting remaining particles into the clay bar and leaving your vehicle free of fallout.

Both chemical and mechanical decontamination should be performed in conjunction to ensure a clean paint surface, crucial for the paint correction or coating application process.

If you are able to feel the scratch with your fingernail, the scratch is too deep and cannot be repaired via machine compounding and polishing.

For deep scratches and rock chips, the damaged area must be re-painted or touched up.

We provide this service, and can repair the damaged area to 50-95% correction.

Areas with missing paint larger than a US quarter cannot be repaired at Silicon Valley Autoderm.

No, we cannot repair dings and dents. However, please contact us if you would like a referral for Paintless Dent Repair (PDR).