Auto paint and retouching in Woodside, NY

A single panel, camera-matched and sprayed in our sealed booth, runs $450 to $890 depending on the panel and how much blending it needs into what sits next to it. A bumper scuff — the most common job we do — is a flat $390. A stone chip that only needs a touch-in rather than a full respray is usually a fraction of either number. Every price is written down and shown to you before we start, never estimated verbally over the counter.

We do not mix to the code on your door jamb, because that code describes the colour your car was when it left the factory rather than the colour it is now. A spectrophotometer reads your actual panel, we mix to that reading, spray a test card, and check it in daylight against the car before committing the real panel. Sun, washing and time move every colour a measurable distance over five years, which is exactly why the code alone is not enough.

Because the chemistry sets the schedule, not us. Primer, colour and clear coat each need their own flash time, and the clear coat needs genuine heat and hours to cure to full hardness before the panel can be cut, polished or driven hard. A single panel repair is two to five days from drop-off to collection; more than one panel, or a colour needing several test cards, sits toward the long end. We will give you a real date, not a hopeful one.

Often, yes. A scatter of chips that have not rusted and have not gone through to bare metal can usually be filled and blended locally rather than sprayed across the entire panel, at a fraction of the panel price. Chips that have already rusted, gone to bare metal, or sit dense enough to look like a rash of dots after a touch-in are better served by a full respray, and we will show you the difference in daylight before you decide which to pay for.

We blend, as standard, rather than paint to a hard line at the seam. Even an excellent colour match can show as a visible edge the moment the sun sits low, so we fade the new colour into the clear coat of the panel next door instead, which makes the join disappear rather than merely narrowing it. It costs a little more material and a little more time in the booth, and it is the difference between a repair you can see and one you cannot.

That is the exact test we hold our own work to, because bright, low, angled sun is where a poor colour match or a hard paint edge shows up first — a customer will always find it there before we do if we have missed something. Matching by spectrophotometer, checking a test card in daylight rather than only under booth lighting, and blending into the next panel rather than stopping at a seam are all aimed squarely at passing that test, not at looking acceptable under a showroom light.

24 months or 24,000 miles, whichever comes first, on the workmanship and the materials, the same as everything else we sell. If a repaired panel lifts, cracks, or fades unevenly against the panel next to it inside that window, we inspect it at no charge and put it right at no charge, and we do not argue about whether the cause was the paint, the prep, or the substrate. The warranty stays with the car, so it survives a sale.

Usually, though it takes longer and we will say so upfront. A previous poor repaint often means matching against paint that has already faded or been mixed slightly wrong, so we will sometimes need to blend across more than one panel to land the colour convincingly, or recommend a wider repair than you came in expecting. We will show you exactly why before we quote it, on the car, in daylight, rather than ask you to trust a description over the phone.