Under 2 years — 12-Month Sealant
A lease you hand back, a car you are selling, or you simply want to try a coated car before committing.
$399 on a sedan, and it still includes the full detail and decontamination. Renew it or move up next year.
Pick on how long you are keeping the car, not on how good the top tier sounds. Under two years, the 12-Month or 2-Year sealant. Three to five years, the 5-Year Coating. Longer than that and parked outside, 5-Year Plus.
Every tier already includes a full interior and exterior detail plus the complete decontamination process. Correction is priced separately on top and is optional — a car with clean paint can take any tier with no correction at all.
There are 48 prices on the ceramic page and nothing explaining how to navigate them. This is that explanation.
The durability figures are the manufacturers' own, for the specific product on each tier.
| Tier | Product | Manufacturer-rated durability | Sedan, no correction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12-Month Sealant | Gyeon Q² CanCoat EVO | Up to 12 months on a daily driver | $399 |
| 2-Year Sealant | Gtechniq EXO v5 | 18 to 24 months | $549 |
| 5-Year Coating | Gtechniq Crystal Serum Light | Up to 5 years | $649 |
| 5-Year Plus | Crystal Serum Light with an EXO v5 top coat | Up to 5 years, with the EXO refreshing the water behaviour | $849 |
These are manufacturer ratings, not a warranty. SF City Wash is not a Gtechniq Accredited Detailer, so we do not offer or administer a coating guarantee, and we are not going to imply one. A rating is a ceiling under good care — San Francisco salt air and fog pull every one of these numbers down, and wash method is the single biggest variable.
A lease you hand back, a car you are selling, or you simply want to try a coated car before committing.
$399 on a sedan, and it still includes the full detail and decontamination. Renew it or move up next year.
EXO v5 at 18 to 24 months matches a typical lease term almost exactly, and it is the strongest water behaviour of any tier on day one.
$549 on a sedan.
Crystal Serum Light. The tier for a car you are keeping, and the point where the maths starts genuinely favouring a coating over repeated sealants.
$649 on a sedan.
CSL with EXO v5 over the top. Gtechniq themselves recommend an EXO top coat over CSL to extend durability and gloss, and the topper is the part you refresh.
$849 on a sedan. The tier that makes most sense in the Sunset, the Richmond or anywhere coastal.
Take the 12-Month. It costs the least, includes the same full detail and decontamination, and you will know a year from now whether you want to go further.
Nobody has ever regretted starting one tier down.
Then do not buy any of them. Brushes and harsh chemistry take years off every product on this list. Spend it on regular proper washes instead.
Unpopular, and true. See the tunnel wash guide.
The tier decides how long the protection lasts. Correction decides what it is protecting. They are independent choices and the correction one usually costs more.
A coating is transparent and it is permanent for its rated life, so whatever the paint looks like on the day it goes on is what you are looking at for years. That is the whole argument for correcting first — and equally the argument for not correcting a car whose paint is already clean.
On a sedan, correction adds $250 for one step, $500 for two and $750 for three, and those adders scale up by 25% for a midsize SUV and 50% for a large SUV or truck. So a sedan 5-Year Coating is $649 with no correction and $1,149 with a two-step.
Most daily drivers want a one-step. It removes the bulk of light swirling in a single stage, takes 4 to 6 hours, and lifts gloss dramatically. Going higher spends clear coat you do not get back for a difference that is small on a car you actually drive. The correction-level guide works through it properly.
And if the torch test shows clean paint, take a no-correction package and keep the money. We will tell you when that is the case.
This is why our numbers look higher than a coating-only quote from somewhere else. Add these line items back to that quote and compare again.
If you are coating more than one vehicle at the same address on the same visit, 5% comes off the combined total — any number of cars, off the whole invoice rather than per car.
Coating is quote-only at every tier, because the correction level genuinely depends on what the paint looks like and nobody can judge that from a description.
More short answers live on the FAQ.
The services this guide is about:
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Not on which tier sounds best. Quoted after we look at the paint, and 5% off the total for more than one car.