Columbus, Ohio · Ceramic coating
It’s a sacrificial
layer. Not armor.
Coating makes your paint easier to clean and keeps it glossy for years. It does not stop rock chips. Anybody telling you different is charging you PPF money for a bottle of liquid.
The two ceramics
People call and ask “how much for ceramic?” First thing Ameer asks back: on your glass, or on your paint? They are two different products that got stuck with the same word.
Ceramic tint
Film. Inside of the glass.
The one most people leave with. Real heat rejection, no signal interference.
It blocks heat and glare. The state cares about this one: front side windows have to let at least 50% of the light through, plus or minus 3%.
$300 all around Confirmed price
All around means every window except the windshield.
Read the actual law →Ceramic coating
Liquid. Outside, on the paint.
It blocks nothing legal. Nobody writes tickets for what’s on your clear coat. What it changes is how water, salt and dirt behave on the surface, and how long the shine lasts.
It has nothing to do with your windows. Different material, different bay time, different money.
Depends on your paint.
Priced after we look at it — see below
What it actually is
Liquid glass in a bottle. Mostly silica. It goes onto your clear coat, it cures hard, and it bonds — it is not a wax sitting on top waiting for the first rain to take it off.
The layer is thin. Microns thin. What you get for that is a surface harder and slicker than the clear coat under it, and it takes the abuse first. That is what sacrificial means. It wears out on purpose. When it’s gone, your paint is still exactly where it was the day we handed the keys back.
That’s the whole product. No force field. No magic. A layer you let die first so the paint doesn’t.
Which is worth real money in this city. Salt goes down in November and it doesn’t leave until March, and every winter it sits on somebody’s paint for four months. On a coated car, it sits on the coating, and it rinses off.
Does / doesn’t
Read the second list before you spend the money.
- DoesWater beads and sheets off. Half your dirt leaves with it.
- DoesSalt, bugs and bird mess land on the coating instead of your clear coat.
- DoesGloss holds for years, not the six weeks you get out of a wax.
- DoesSlick enough that a proper hand wash puts fewer swirls in.
- Doesn’tStop a rock chip. That is PPF — real urethane film, thick enough to feel with your thumbnail. Coating is microns.
- Doesn’tStop a key, a shopping cart, or the brushes in a drive-through wash.
- Doesn’tSave paint from a bird bomb you left baking for a week. Acid still etches. Get it off.
- Doesn’tFix what is already in the paint. It seals it in, and the gloss makes it easier to see.
- Doesn’tLast forever, whatever the box says.
We would rather say it now than have you back in the shop in March asking why the coating didn’t stop gravel off a dump truck on 270. If chips are what you’re worried about, you want film on the front end, not liquid on the whole car.
Correction comes first
Coating locks in whatever is under it. Put it over dealer-wash swirls and you don’t have a coated car, you have swirls under glass for the next few years.
So we polish first. Machine, pads, a light in your eyes, panel by panel. Correction takes a couple of microns of clear coat off to level the scratch instead of filling it. Then wash, iron remover, clay, and a wipe-down that strips every drop of polishing oil off the paint. Skip that wipe-down and the coating bonds to oil and lets go inside a year. That step is invisible, and it is the whole job.
The bottle is the cheap part. The hours in front of it are what you’re paying for.
How long it really lasts
Boxes say five years. Some say lifetime. The honest version: a coating doesn’t fall off, the water behaviour fades. You’ll see the beads get lazy long before anything else changes.
How fast comes down to three things — how the paint was prepped, what you drive through, and how you wash it. A garaged car washed by hand and a work truck that lives outside and eats brush washes are not the same coating twelve months in. Anybody who quotes you a number of years without asking where you park is guessing.
How to not waste the money
- No brush washes. The brushes are what put the swirls in. That is the number one killer.
- Two buckets, pH-neutral soap, top down, wheels last.
- Wash it every couple of weeks. Coating makes that easy. It doesn't make it optional.
- Bird droppings and bug guts come off the same day. They etch through anything.
- Don't wax over it. You're covering slick with something less slick.
What it costs.
Straight answer: there is no posted number for coating, and a shop that posts one hasn’t seen your paint. A two-year-old garaged car that needs a light polish and a black work truck with eight years of swirls in it are not the same job. Not close. The price is the correction hours, and we count those with our eyes on the car, under a light.
Call for a number on this one. Ceramic tint we’ll price over the phone in ten seconds — $300all around for Grade A. Coating we won’t, because we’d be making it up.
5220 Trabue Road, Suite D, Columbus, OH 43228· Ameer answers