The dreaded black paint vs. the easy white paint..

Barry Theal

Barry Theal

New member
Often I here people saying there is a difference in polishing darker paints rather then white lighter colored paints. Im curious What are your thoughts about this? Does a black car take you longer to polish then a white one? Do you charge more for black? Do you get excited when someone says my car is white, on a flip note do you dread black paint? Tell me what comes to mind when you think of things like this. I thought this would be a great discussion if it goes well.
 
Im not a pro detailer by any stretch, but I find darker cars harder to perfect, but a lot easier to "see results" on. And I think a darker car, polished even to "as good as you can get it" just looks nicer than a lighter colored car.



My silver Accord never showed marring, but of course silver (and white) are harder to make "pop" than darker colors. My old royal ruby red I30 was about as good as I could get it and it looked spectacular. IMHO There is just *something* about a dark color with metal flake that has a decent polishing job.
 
I actually love working on black paint. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, though.

For me its easier to find imperfections on black paint, so I like the fact that

I have to spend less time inspecting and reinspecting my work to get it

perfect. And I love the final result you get from perfect black paint. Its

extremely rewarding.



I also feel like black is one of the easiest colors to make improvements on.

Even if its just a good "one step" polish, it'll greatly restore clarity to the finish.



I don't feel like a black car should take any longer than a white or silver car,

if you're going for perfection. If you had two cars with the exact same kind

of paint, but one's black and one's white, (assuming there were no variables

such as how fast you're working, different types of defects, products used, etc…)

then shouldn't they both take the same amount of time?



Very interested to see everyone else's thoughts on this.
 
Noting that I'm pretty particular about marring on *any* paint, and that I basically believe that "clearcoat is clearcoat no matter what color it's over"...well, sure- black is harder to keep "Autopian perfect" and white is easier to keep "normal person OK". But sometimes the *polishing* seems to go the other way for me.



Oddly enough though, I can sometimes find black *easier* to correct than the "easy" colors. I can see the flaws easier. Metallics and even white take all sorts of crazy inspections to get just right. The last straight black vehicle I did wasn't all that bad, even though it was a Suburban, much easier for me than the Carbon Metallic on my Yukon XLD, which was the worst of both worlds because the carbon/black showed every little flaw but the metallic made inspections kinda tricky.



But *living* with different colors is different from correcting them! My Crown Vic has paint issues that would necessitate a repaint on black, but they're livable on white. Heh heh, one reason Accumulatorette thought I should buy it was that white wouldn't drive me nuts on a car that's gonna get abused.



Gee, when I was a kid I always said I'd never own anything except black cars.... :o
 
Paint is paint, defects are defects.



I don't and never have understood how people say "on light paint I can go straight to lsp when I use product x"...



If you can do it on light paint, why not on dark paint? The same defects will still be present.



Your new avatar reminds me of the guy smoking a stick next to the lambo
 
Deep Gloss Auto Salon said:
Paint is paint, defects are defects.



I don't and never have understood how people say "on light paint I can go straight to lsp when I use product x"...



If you can do it on light paint, why not on dark paint? The same defects will still be present.



Your new avatar reminds me of the guy smoking a stick next to the lambo
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Agreed!



Light colors may look "ok" with less polishing, but that doesn't mean it should necessarily be done that way. However, there may be instances where short cuts could be used for lighter colors, such as wholesale work.





Just my $.02



Rasky
 
The reason I started this thread was because one of my employees said to me " damn another black car" My thoughts were polishing paint is polishing paint. I don't care if its white or black. I tried to exsplain to him that paint is paint and it should be done the same way when it comes to defect removal. Obvious all cars are different, but Im talking the first leveling of paint, then refineing it, then bringing it to its fullest potential. Often I here people say its white so I could cheat. Or you can't see the defects in white paint either. To me this is nonsense and was gonna show him what others thought. To me a White car properly polished is elegant and something to see.



Jason, I couldn't agree with you more on how you said it! The new avatar is a joke by the way! lol
 
I think that's what detailing experience with different car manufacturers and colors teaches you: nothing is the same from one car to the next. It all about technique and use of products and adapting to them. It's also what separates true detailing professions from wanna-be detailers (AKA, hacks). But when you are doing wholesale detailing, say for a dealer, who gives you only so much time to clean up a car, and only provides you with limited product choices, what you do for black may be the same for what you do for white. That's what makes "learning" difficult and hence differentiating between what is needed for one manufacturer's color versus another.



I must say, that what works for one detailer may not work for another because of one's limited experience and techniques, or just plain "bad habits."



Hey, we ALL wanna-be as good as Barry Theal, right?
 
Deep Gloss Auto Salon said:
Paint is paint, defects are defects.



I don't and never have understood how people say "on light paint I can go straight to lsp when I use product x"...



If you can do it on light paint, why not on dark paint? The same defects will still be present.



Your new avatar reminds me of the guy smoking a stick next to the lambo
Click to expand...
I'm just an amateur, but I only polish/remove defects in my paint when they are egregious enough for me to notice that they even exist! On a black car, that happens pretty often! However, on my other white daily driver, I hardly notice anything at all!



I absolutely agree with those kinds of people. If my goal is to have the car look "excellent", and a white car already looks "excellent" because the color is hiding defects, then why would I fix those defects? Then again, it sounds like most of the people on Autopia are trying to bring the paint to its "fullest potential", where I can understand why someone would want to perform all the same steps.



I guess I won't ascend into Autopia when I die. :(
 
JuneBug said:
The only paint I don't care for is single stage white. And don't get me started on GELCOAT!!!!!!!
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Single stage white paint is insanely hard. As Mike Phillips once said, if you have white single stage paint with swirls, better learn to love swirls!
 
amcdonal86 said:
I absolutely agree with those kinds of people. If my goal is to have the car look "excellent", and a white car already looks "excellent" because the color is hiding defects, then why would I fix those defects? Then again, it sounds like most of the people on Autopia are trying to bring the paint to its "fullest potential", where I can understand why someone would want to perform all the same steps.



I guess I won't ascend into Autopia when I die. :(
Click to expand...



Most of my customers feel that way. If the paint already looks good to them, they don't want to pay for any extra steps that would be needed to make a darker color look similarly defect free. My current car is silver and my last one was dark grey. Took me less time to get my silver car visibly swirl free than the dark grey car even though both had about the same level of swirls prior to polishing. Works for me. :)
 
I find that when I get silver/white cars they are often in worse shape than the majority of the dark cars I see; usually because people let them go longer. It doesn't make much of a difference to me, under the lights it's always the same story.
 
Interesting! I would think the dark ones would be worse, because people are washing them more frequently (with improper washing techniques like tunnel washes!).
 
Barry Theal said:
The reason I started this thread was because one of my employees said to me " damn another black car" My thoughts were polishing paint is polishing paint. I don't care if its white or black. I tried to exsplain to him...
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Heh heh, you might need to keep an eye on that boy ;)



amcdonald86 said:
.. If my goal is to have the car look "excellent", and a white car already looks "excellent" because the color is hiding defects, then why would I fix those defects? Then again, it sounds like most of the people on Autopia are trying to bring the paint to its "fullest potential"...I guess I won't ascend into Autopia when I die..
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Eh...maybe it's just more of my Autopian Heresy, but I agree with you. As I keep saying, IMO Life Is Not A Car Show. Yeah, I've done the "fullest potential" on white (and I might very well do it again sometime), and I almost always do it on silver..but once my vehicle looks good enough for me, and/or your vehicle looks good enough for you...then that's that. It's all about what constitutes "good enough" in the eye of the beholder. But that's us amateurs doing our own stuff...what about the Pros :confused:



I often wonder how the Pros here would approach this....do you give a customer with a white car that last iota of correction whether they want/appreciate it or not? Will they pay for something they can't discern? Do you say "I'll make it perfect or take your business elsewhere"? Or do you pull a one-step with OHC, wax it up, and give the satisfied customer his nice-looking, but far-from-Autopian white car at a price he's willing to pay?



OTOH, should Barry let an employee do a less-than-stellar job? Might it not undermine the reputation for impeccable standards that makes Presidential Details so special? At any rate, I'd sure think that the quality of work his shop turns out oughta be up to *him*, not his employees. The boss sets the standards.
 
Accumulator said:
OTOH, should Barry let an employee do a less-than-stellar job? Might it not undermine the reputation for impeccable standards that makes Presidential Details so special? At any rate, I'd sure think that the quality of work his shop turns out oughta be up to *him*, not his employees. The boss sets the standards.
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I guess if you are looking at it more like the customer paid $XX, so you should do the same job/steps on both a white and black car, then the argument is valid. But I'm guessing most customers probably just want a certain level of "looks good" -ness and not full potential. But then again, they probably would want to pay accordingly.
 
amcdonal86 said:
I absolutely agree with those kinds of people. If my goal is to have the car look "excellent", and a white car already looks "excellent" because the color is hiding defects, then why would I fix those defects? Then again, it sounds like most of the people on Autopia are trying to bring the paint to its "fullest potential", where I can understand why someone would want to perform all the same steps.



I guess I won't ascend into Autopia when I die. :(
Click to expand...



Scottwax said:
Most of my customers feel that way. If the paint already looks good to them, they don't want to pay for any extra steps that would be needed to make a darker color look similarly defect free. My current car is silver and my last one was dark grey. Took me less time to get my silver car visibly swirl free than the dark grey car even though both had about the same level of swirls prior to polishing. Works for me. :)
Click to expand...



Scott/amcdonal86: I also have customers that only want the paint to look better but are not looking for perfection, or that are on a budget. To them I explain the 80/20 rule = it will take 20% of the effort to get 80% of the defects removed but that last 20% will take 80% more effort. BUT your answers are not really aligned with what I think Barry was asking.



I believe Barry was saying that if a customer brings a white vehicle and a black vehicle in and says "make them perfect" if all things are equal (paint hardness/defect severity/etc) excluding the color of the paint would it take the same amout of work (and thus same billing cost) to complete each vehicle. AND TO THIS my answer is yes, same amount of work...



Kind of similar to how I charge the guy with a yugo the same price as the guy with a Ferrari for perfection.. I do not discriminate based on race/color/creed:yo:
 
I did a polish job on my moms white clear coat Lincoln with D151 and it looked great. It had never been waxed or polished for 6 years and it was pretty beat up and stained. My mom actualy walked by it in the parking lot because she thought it was a new car. That was a one step correction. I don't think that you could that kind of reaction from a single step on black. That entire job was pretty easy it only took 4 hours.
 
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