Short answer: the spray sealant included with every exterior detail holds up about 2 to 3 months. A ceramic sealant buys you 12 months or 2 years and starts at $399. A hardened ceramic coating starts at $649 for a sedan. Every one of those prices already includes the full interior and exterior detail and the paint decontamination, and any tier can be paired with 1-step, 2-step, or 3-step correction. Wax is the shortest lived of the three, and we sell it only as part of a maintenance wash. None of them make your paint scratch proof. The right pick comes down to where the car parks at night and how long you plan to keep it.
Every protection product has a number on the bottle and a different number in real life. These are the four tiers we actually apply, in the order we would put money into them.
Wax appears on our menu only as part of an Exterior Wash and Wax add-on, and it is a finish rather than a protection plan. We have not measured a durability window for it, so we are not going to publish one. If a shop quotes you a specific number of months for a carnauba wax, ask how they arrived at it.
The label says 6 months. With regular driving, rain, and SF fog, what we actually see is 2 to 3 months of active hydrophobic protection. It gets applied to a damp panel after the final rinse on every exterior detail we do, which means a $100 sedan exterior wash already comes with the entry tier of paint protection. Reapply at every detail and it never really lapses.
Full interior and exterior detail, decontamination and clay bar, then a ceramic sealant applied directly to the paint. At the base price there is no machine polishing step, which makes this tier a good fit for paint that is already in decent condition. If the paint does need work, 1-step, 2-step, or 3-step correction can be added to either sealant. The adders above are for a sedan or coupe.
We use Gtechniq C1 and C4, rated for 2 to 5 years depending on maintenance and conditions. The rating is a ceiling, not a promise. A coated car that goes through an automatic wash every other week will not get 5 years out of it, and a hand washed garage car might beat the middle of the range comfortably.
The durability gap is not a marketing gap. It comes from what the product physically does when it hits the clear coat.
They form a sacrificial layer over the clear coat. Rain, road grime, soap, and UV work on that layer instead of your paint, which is the whole point of them. It also means they wash away over months. Our spray sealant goes on a damp panel right after the final rinse, spreads with a clean microfiber, and buffs off. That is a five minute step, not a service.
A ceramic coating is a liquid polymer, usually silica based, that chemically bonds to your clear coat and cures into a hard, semi-permanent layer. Once cured the surface is hydrophobic, so water beads and runs off instead of sitting, and dirt releases with less effort on the next wash. It does not wash off, which is why the install is measured in hours and the protection in years.
Before any coating goes on, every panel gets stripped of polishing oils and residue with an isopropyl alcohol wipe down. Any oil left behind stops the coating from bonding correctly. This is the step that gets rushed most often in this trade, and it is invisible in the final photos, which is exactly why it gets rushed.
We apply Gtechniq with a foam applicator, work it in a cross-hatch pattern, let it flash, then level it with a clean microfiber. Flash time changes with temperature and humidity, so it is managed per panel rather than set by a timer. Each panel is inspected under light before we move on.
Want the full sequence, all five stages in order? Read the ceramic coating process.
Coating gets sold on a lot of claims we will not make. Here is where the honest line sits.
9H is a hardness rating for the coating layer. It is not armor for the car. A coating resists chemical etching and light marring, and it makes the surface far easier to clean. It will not stop a shopping cart, a key, or a badly folded wash mitt.
Automated car washes use stiff nylon brushes that scratch clear coat, coated or not. They are the single largest source of swirl marks on Bay Area vehicles. Those brushes pick up grit from the car ahead of you and drag it across your paint in circles. After a coating, hand washing or touchless only. This part is not negotiable if you want the coating to last.
A coating is semi-permanent, so it seals whatever condition the paint is in on the day it goes on. Swirl marks, light scratches, and water spot etching that are there at application get locked underneath for the life of the coating. Removing them is a separate machine polishing job that has to happen first.
Coated paint sheds water and releases dirt more easily, so washes get faster and less frequent. They do not stop. Bird droppings and tree sap are acidic and will etch a coated panel if they sit long enough. We see that constantly on cars parked under trees.
Sedan and coupe pricing with no machine correction, which is the lowest rung on each tier. Every ceramic price below already includes the full interior and exterior detail and the paint decontamination. The only two things that move the number are how much correction the paint gets and how long the protection lasts.
Final price depends on vehicle size, paint condition, panel count, and how much correction the paint needs. Larger vehicles and heavily neglected paint are quoted individually. The full sheet, every package across all three vehicle sizes, lives on the coating page.
See the full ceramic price sheet →Correction is not required. It is strongly recommended, and the reason is mechanical rather than commercial: the coating is semi-permanent, so it seals whatever is underneath it.
The test is simple and you can run it yourself. Pull the car into direct sunlight and look down the hood at an angle. If the paint looks clean and the reflections are sharp, a light enhancement pass is enough. If you see circular haze that moves as you move, that is swirl marks, and a coating applied over them keeps them there for years.
This is also why our 12-month and 2-year sealant packages include no correction. They are priced for paint that is already in decent shape. If your paint is not, the sealant will not hide it either.
Paint condition, panel count, clear coat thickness, and defect type all change how long the job takes and what it costs. A mildly swirled coupe and a heavily marred full-size SUV are not the same work, and a flat rate would either undercharge one or overcharge the other. We inspect first, then quote the actual work.
How paint correction works →A coating changes the maintenance routine. It does not remove it. Four habits do most of the work.
24 hours
Minimum before any water contact. This is the one that forces us to plan around the forecast.
7 days
Before the first wash.
2 to 4 weeks
To reach full hardness.
We send written aftercare instructions with every coating appointment, specific to the product applied.
Bay Area salt air and fog can reduce coating longevity without proper upkeep. That is not a reason to skip the coating, it is a reason to do the annual top coat spray rather than treat the install as finished.
The case for coating on a daily driver here is specific: UV exposure, salt air off the Bay, and parking in tight spaces all work on the paint constantly. A coating cuts maintenance time noticeably, because rain sheets off and the surface stays cleaner between washes, and it holds the paint condition you paid to get.
We regularly see the opposite pattern too: cars parked under trees in the Sunset and the Richmond that pick up sap and bird droppings faster than the owner can keep up with. On those, a coating does not stop the mess, it just buys you more time before the mess does damage.
Three situations cover most of the cars we work on. Find yours.
Take the spray sealant.
It is already in the exterior detail at no extra cost. Book a detail every 2 to 3 months and the protection never lapses. Spending $649 to coat a car you are selling next year is not a good trade.
Exterior detail, $100 and up →Take the 2-year ceramic sealant.
$549 for a sedan with no correction step, detail and decontamination included. It is the tier that makes sense when you want real protection but the paint does not yet justify machine work. If it does, 1-step correction on the same tier is $799.
Compare sealant packages →Take correction plus a 5-year coating.
$899 for a sedan with a 1-step correction, $1,149 with a 2-step. This is the path that fixes the paint and then protects the fixed version. Over five years it works out cheaper than repeated sealant cycles, and it is the one that holds resale condition.
Get a coating quote →Our public job record covers 11 documented vehicles, and every one of them is an interior detail, a full package, or a headlight restoration. None of them is a ceramic coating or a paint correction. Rather than borrow interior before and after photos to sell paint protection, we would rather say that plainly. These are process photos from real coating and correction work. They are not before and after pairs.
The full five-stage coating process, written out step by step, and the actual products and machines we put on cars. If you want to check our work before spending four figures, those two pages are the honest version of a proof gallery.
The coating process →11 real jobs across San Francisco and Daly City, with before and after photos at the customer address. All interior and full-package work, which is the majority of what we do. Judge the standard from those.
See documented jobs →More answers on booking, timing, and service areas are on the full FAQ.
Coating and correction are quoted after we look at the paint. Send a few photos and your vehicle size and we will tell you which tier is worth it and which one is not. If you just want the detail with the sealant, that one you can book outright.
Or text us at (415) 360-1964. Open every day, 8 AM to 7 PM.