A ceramic coating bonds to your paint and protects it for years instead of weeks, and you pick how many. Every package includes paint correction first, because a coating locks in whatever is underneath it. Drop off at our Savage shop.
Six short chapters. If you have never had a coating and you’re trying to work out whether it’s worth the money, start at one and page through.
A ceramic coating is a liquid we apply by hand, panel by panel. It chemically bonds to your paint and hardens into a thin, clear, glass like layer. Once it cures it isn’t sitting on top of the paint the way wax does, it’s attached to it.
That’s the whole difference, and it is why a coating is measured in years while wax is measured in weeks.
What it is not: it isn’t a spray on wax, not a sealant in a fancier bottle, and not a clear film. Paint protection film, the thick clear wrap that stops rock chips, is a different product entirely. A coating is chemical. A film is physical.
Your paint is layers. Primer, then the color, then clear coat on top. The clear coat is the part you see, the part that makes paint look glossy, and the part that takes all the abuse. Sun, road salt, bird droppings, tree sap, brake dust, every wash.
Clear coat is also the part that fails. When you see a car with paint that looks chalky, faded, or peeling in patches on the roof and hood, that’s clear coat failure. Once it’s gone you can’t polish it back. The panel has to be repainted.
A coating gives that clear coat something to hide behind. Contaminants hit the coating first, and the coating is the thing that’s meant to wear.
Three different products people use interchangeably. Here is the honest comparison.
| How long it lasts | What it does | Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wax | A few weeks, less through a salted winter | Warm gloss, light water beading, sits on the surface and washes off | Low |
| Sealant | Several months | Synthetic, bonds better than wax, real protection through a season. This is what comes with our exterior detail | Included |
| Ceramic coating | 3, 5 or 8 years, your choice | Chemically bonded, hard, strong water beading, real UV and chemical resistance, deepest gloss | From $950 |
A coating isn’t a better wax. It’s a different category of product doing a different job.
This is the part most people don’t know, and it’s the reason a coating costs what it costs.
A coating is clear, and it seals in whatever is underneath it. If your paint has swirl marks, that fine spiderweb scratching you see in direct sun, a coating doesn’t remove them. It locks them in for the life of the coating. Now you’re looking at swirls under glass for years, and the only way out is stripping the coating and starting over.
So the paint gets corrected first. Correction means machine polishing, which removes a microscopically thin layer of clear coat to level out the scratches.
How much correction your paint needs is what separates our three packages, not the coating itself. Every tier includes it. Nobody gets a coating over unpolished paint here.
Probably yes if you’re keeping the car another three years or more, it lives outside or in a driveway, it’s a color that shows everything, black, dark blue, red, or you just bought it and want to keep it looking new from day one.
Probably not if you’re trading the car in a few months, or you are on a lease you hand back next year. In those cases our exterior detail at $75 gets you a sealed, glossy car for a fraction of the price, and that’s the honest answer even though it’s the cheaper one.
Not sure which side you land on? Call or text us and describe the car. We’ll tell you straight, including when the answer is don’t bother.
Four things you notice living with a coated car.
Rain, road spray and bugs sheet off instead of drying onto the paint. Washing goes from a chore to a rinse, and that’s the part people comment on first.
Minnesota summers cook paint and winters bury it in salt. A coating takes the UV hit so your clear coat fades and chalks far slower than it otherwise would.
Coated paint reads wetter and darker than a fresh wax job, especially on dark colors. The difference is that it still looks like that in year three.
Bird droppings, sap and salt attack the coating instead of your clear coat. The coating is meant to wear so the paint underneath doesn’t.
What separates these is how much paint correction is included. Every package comes with a coating, and you can choose how many years of protection you want on any of them.
3 year coating included, longer protection available
5 year coating included, longer protection available
Two layer system, up to 8 year protection
Every package above comes with a coating included, and you can step the protection up on any of them. We carry coatings rated for 3, 5 and 8 years. A longer coating costs more up front and less over the life of the car. Tell us how long you plan to keep it and we’ll tell you which one makes sense, including when the shorter one is the smarter buy.
Prices are for standard cars and small SUVs. Larger vehicles, and paint that’s heavily oxidized, badly scratched or previously coated, take more time and get quoted after we see it.
Send photos with your request and we’ll give you an exact number before you commit to anything.
Already dropping the car off? Add window tint or a Complete Refresh to the same visit.
Same sequence every time, whichever package you pick.
A full wash, then an iron remover and clay to pull embedded brake dust and contamination out of the paint. Anything left on the surface ends up sealed under the coating, so this step isn’t optional.
We put the paint under lighting that shows the defects and take a paint thickness reading. That tells us what is there and how much clear coat we have to work with, which is what a correction plan is built on.
Machine polishing at the level your package includes, one step, two step, or multi stage. This is the longest part of the job by a wide margin and it is where the finished result is decided.
Every panel is wiped down to strip polishing oils off the surface. Skip this and the coating bonds to oil instead of paint, then fails early. It’s invisible work that decides whether the coating lasts.
The coating goes on by hand in small sections and gets leveled inside a specific window. Too early and it smears, too late and you get high spots that have to be polished back off. This is why coating is shop work and not driveway work.
The car stays inside to cure. When you pick it up we walk the whole car with you and tell you exactly how to look after it for the first week and how to wash it from then on.
If yours isn’t here, call or text and ask.
Photos of the paint are what let us quote accurately, so send a few if you can. We come back with a real number, usually the same day.
Ceramic coating out of our Savage shop for Savage, Prior Lake, Shakopee, Burnsville, Lakeville, Apple Valley, Jordan, Credit River and the rest of the South Metro.