One of the most common things you can do to maintain your car is to wash your can and put a nice layer of wax for shine.
Although when it comes time to apply the wax, there is a bit of a misconception that people believe and what the wax actually does.
It is true, a proper application of car wax will indeed add more shine to your paint, but not in the way that most people think that it works.
In this article, we’re going to cover what a wax actually does to your paint that makes it so shiny!
The Amount Of Shine Will Be Dependent On The Color Of Your Paint
It’s pretty common sense once you think about it, but the lighter your car color is, the less of a difference you’ll see when you wax your car as opposed to if you had a red or black car.
The reason for this is the light colored cars have more of a “transparent” color. So when you add wax to your paint, which is also “transparent” then your eye will only see so much of a difference.
And of course, if you have a black car, the results will be much different.
What Happens When You Apply Wax To Your Car?
Here’s the part that a lot of people get confused. When you apply a wax, the only thing that you’re doing is hiding the current swirls and scratches that your paint currently has.
Remember that, the wax is hiding the swirls- not removing them.
There’s a BIG difference to that.
Once the wax wears off in a month or two, the light scratches will come back up and your paint will look dull or not-as-shiny anymore.
This is a very inexpensive solution to add more shine to your paint. You could do this indefinitely for the life of your car and there will be no problem with it.
Just take into account that when I say swirls and scratches, I’m talking about light-micro swirls and scratches. Not a scratch that someone made by running a key along your paint or someone scraped a golf club across the side of the door panel.
The wax is literally filling in the micro-scratches so that the paint is completely even.
Taking It A Step Further For Significant Results
Although you could indeed wax your car every month or so for sustained results, you can always go a step further for even greater- more luscious results.
Instead of simply hiding the swirls and scratches, you could remove them by proper paint correction. This isn’t as straightforward and simple as waxing your car.
You’ll need a lot more tools such as a buffer, pads, compounds, polishes, towels, and so forth to complete the job properly. It will also require a lot of time spent on practice AND learning the skills as well.
But the results will be COMPLETELY different. People will come up to you and ask when you got a paint job. I hear it all the time from customers.
If you don’t have the time to learn it all on your own, you can always simply pay a professional detailer to do it for you. Just make sure you’re paying someone that knows what they’re doing.
If you let anyone use a buffer on your car, they’ll do MUCH more damage to your paint then they will good.