Paint correction step by step
Paint correction is one of those services where the customer doesn’t always know exactly what they’re buying. From the outside it looks the same as a 100 PLN polish at a car wash. The difference is on the inside — in the amount of work, the equipment, and how precisely you control what’s happening to the paint.
Where scratches come from
Everyday scratches on paint come from washing. Brushes at automatic car washes. A microfiber cloth that picked up sand. Wiper blades. Even dust wiped off a dry panel with a rag leaves micro-scratches.
The effect builds up over years. On dark paint you see it especially — under harsh light you can see a network of parallel, concentric lines. That’s holograms. From a distance the car looks fine; up close in sunlight it looks matte.
What happens during correction
Correction is about removing a very thin layer of paint — the one where the scratches sit — and polishing what remains to a high gloss. This is done with a polisher, an abrasive compound, and a polishing compound, in several stages.
How much paint comes off? Usually 2-5 microns for single-stage correction, 5-10 for two-stage. For comparison — the entire clearcoat layer is usually 40-60 microns. So we remove a few percent of what you have.
Why we measure thickness
Before every correction we check the paint thickness with an electronic gauge, panel by panel. The gauge shows the value in microns. We record every reading. Only based on this data do we decide how aggressively we can work.
Why does it matter? Because on used cars the paint is often uneven. A panel replaced after an accident has a different thickness. A panel polished by someone before has a loss you don’t know about. Without a gauge you’d be working blind — and you could burn through paint on a thinner panel without even realizing.
Single-stage or two-stage
Single-stage correction removes most minor scratches and holograms. It ends with a polish to a high gloss. This is enough for a car with light washing marks that you just want to refresh — for example before a ceramic coating.
Two-stage adds a stronger abrasive step at the beginning. It handles deeper scratches, dulling, marks from improper washing. It costs more and takes more time, but the result is incomparable — the car looks like new from the factory.
Which to choose? We assess during inspection. We don’t sell two-stage correction to a car that doesn’t need it.
How long it takes
Single-stage correction usually takes us one working day. Two-stage — two to three days. The car stays with us the whole time.
We don’t do “quick correction in an hour” — because that would be cheating. An hour is enough for a polish under lights, not for actually removing scratches. The effect would last weeks, until the first wash.
What next after correction
After correction, the paint is clean but freshly exposed. Without protection it will return to its pre-correction state in a few months — because washes will scratch it again.
That’s why the customer usually chooses one of two paths right away: ceramic coating (from one to five years of protection, depending on the coating) or wax (2-6 months, cheaper). Without protection, correction only makes sense if you’re selling the car and want to show it at its best.
If you’re not sure whether your car needs single- or two-stage correction — come in for an inspection. We’ll measure the thickness, look at it under inspection lights, and tell you honestly.