Iron decontamination — $75 to $125
For paint that feels rough after washing. Dissolves the embedded iron particles a wash cannot lift.
See the rough paint guide.
An exterior detail is a safe hand wash plus protection: wheels and tires first, a pre-rinse, a two-bucket contact wash, a full rinse, a dry with clean towels, tire dressing, glass, and a protective layer on the paint.
What is not in the base price is anything that removes bonded contamination or corrects the paint — decontamination, clay, and polishing. Those are separate because they are a different order of work, not because they are upsells.
Exterior Wash & Protection is $100 on a sedan, $125 on a midsize SUV and $150 on a large SUV or truck. It is also included in the Full Package alongside the interior.
Almost every swirl mark in existence was installed during a wash. The sequence below exists specifically to avoid that.
Always first, and with their own tools that never touch paint. Wheels carry the most aggressive contamination on the car — sintered brake dust, road grime, embedded iron — and doing them after the paint means splashing all of it back onto clean panels.
A thorough rinse to carry off everything loose before anything touches the paint. This step removes the grit that would otherwise be dragged across the clear coat by the wash mitt.
One bucket of soap, one of clean rinse water, both with grit guards. The mitt goes soap, panel, rinse bucket, soap. Top panels first and lower panels last, because the bottom of the car is dirtiest. Straight lines, never circles.
A full rinse and then a dry with clean, plush drying towels. Letting a car air-dry, especially in San Francisco's hard water, is how you get the water spots the next guide is about.
Tire dressing applied evenly and not slung all over the paint, exterior glass cleaned properly including the top edge, and trim addressed.
A protective layer over the paint. This is the part that makes the wash last rather than just look good on the day. Bare, unprotected clear coat picks up contamination faster than protected paint, so skipping it costs you at the next wash.
Each one addresses something a wash physically cannot. If none of these apply to your car, you do not need them, and we will say so.
For paint that feels rough after washing. Dissolves the embedded iron particles a wash cannot lift.
See the rough paint guide.
Mechanical removal of everything non-metallic still stuck to the paint: overspray, hardened fallout, industrial grit.
Targeted solvent work on the front end and lower panels. Flat rate at any vehicle size.
For plastic trim that has gone chalky gray. A restorative treatment rather than a dressing that washes off next week.
Flat rate at any size. Careful cleaning and dressing of the engine bay, which nobody does and everybody notices when selling.
Machine polishing to remove swirls and scratches. Quote-only, and always paired with at least a 12-month sealant.
See the correction guide.
Detailing marketing is overwhelmingly about products — which soap, which sealant, which brand. In practice, the thing that determines whether your paint looks better or worse a year from now is how it gets washed, not what it gets washed with.
The mechanism is simple. Clear coat is soft. Any grit trapped between a mitt and the paint gets dragged across it under pressure, and each pass leaves a fine scratch. Thousands of those, in every direction, are what swirl marks are. They are why paint looks hazy in direct sun and why a black car ages worse than a silver one — the damage is identical, the visibility is not.
That is what the two-bucket method is for: the rinse bucket is where the grit goes, so it is not going back onto the car with the next pass. It is also why an automatic tunnel wash is such a reliable way to ruin paint — those brushes have been dragged across hundreds of dirtier cars before yours.
None of this is exotic. It is just slower than the alternative, and slower is the entire product.
We bring our own water and power. No tap, no outlet, no hose needed. That is the only reason exterior work is possible at all in a city where most cars live on the street or in an apartment garage with no hookup.
Rain stops exterior work. Light rain does not affect interior-only jobs, but for an exterior detail, correction or a coating, rain is a genuine problem and we reach out to reschedule before the appointment rather than turning up and doing a compromised job. Rescheduling for weather carries no penalty.
Salt air is a real factor here. Anywhere with a sea breeze — which is most of the western half of the city and everywhere along the coast — gets a fine salt film that holds moisture against paint and accelerates corrosion of anything already embedded in it. Cars in the Sunset, the Richmond and Pacifica want a shorter wash interval than cars on the bay side.
Street parking means bird and tree damage. Both are acidic, both etch clear coat, and both do it faster in sun. Getting them off within a day or two is the highest-value habit for anyone who parks under a tree in this city.
An Exterior Wash & Protection is $100 on a sedan. Adding the interior as a Full Package is $279 — less than booking the two separately, which is why most people take the full package if both halves need attention.
If the paint has swirls or the finish is dull rather than dirty, that is correction rather than washing, and it gets quoted after we look at it.
More short answers live on the FAQ.
The services this guide is about:
Back to the full guide library.
Two buckets, wheels first, straight lines, dried by hand. Exterior wash and protection from $100.