How Much Does It Cost To Paint A Car

Posted by David C. Atkin in Thursday, November 19th 2009

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This is a question that I was asked last week, and the truth is that there is no definite answer to it, a standard paint job on a car takes forty hours to perform, and depending on the shop labor rate, and the cost of supplies this can change quite a bit.

If your talking a custom pint job, like candy apple you can add the shop labor rate times 120 hours, because the paint candy apple works like this, first you’d lay down a base coat of reflective paint, usually silver or gold color, depending the what your looking for.

Then you’d lay a transparent color down, in other words a color that you’d be able to see the base color that you laid down through, and the darker you want this color to look, the more coats of it you’d put on the car, and the supplies alone will cost in the thousands.

Now for a solid color that is not a custom color, you can plan to spend at least $650.00 on the supplies, so in my shop where the labor rate is $75.00 PHR, you’d be looking at least $3,650.00 plus tax to paint your car with a standard color.

By standard I mean like a red, blue, white, well you get the idea, and it doesn’t matter if it’s single stage paint, or a base coat clear coat, in my opinion the base coat clear coat systems are more durable then the single stage paints are, but the choice is yours, it costs about the same.

If your looking for show car paint work, and you’d like it cut & buffed when it’s done, that will cost you extra, if you want it as smooth as glass, you’d be talking another forty hours of work, and that is another $3,000, so you can plan on $6,500.00 plus tax.

It really is up to you to decide the amount of money that you want to spend, this work is not cheap, I’d suggest that you plan a budget and save up the money for the paint work, then it won’t seem as bad, but it does cost a lot of money these days for a perfect paint job.

It true that every shop is different in price, but you do not want to base the search for the shop that is going to paint your car on price, if you want the job done right, you’d better base your search on reputation, and you do pay for the knowledge of the painter.

If this is your car, and you really care how it looks, you’d pay attention to the details, ask the painter for references of people that have used him in the past, look on line for pictures of his work, and contact the BBB in the city that he has his shop in.

Reputation is everything when it comes to paint work on your car, you can’t get a painter with to good of a reputation, his work can never be to good, or his customer to impressed with his work, also you should check out his shop, look at how he keeps it, a clean shop shows a detail oriented person.

If you like everybody else, you looking for the absolute best paint work that you can afford to buy, and it up to you to locate the right shop to do the work on your car, make sure that you ask a lot of questions, make sure that you see pictures of the work that the shop has done.

Every last detail can make a huge difference to the outcome of your paint work on your car, but you can’t blame anybody but yourself for not taking the time to check the reputation of the painter, and the paint shop, so take your time, and be through.

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