Touch-up paint or a body shop?

Factory paint is built in layers: primer layers on the metal or plastic, then the color coat (basecoat), then clear on top. Some cars have single-stage paint instead, color and gloss in one coat, and a tri-coat adds a see-through pearl coat between the color and the clear.

The fingernail test. Run a fingernail across the scratch. If it doesn't catch, try polishing it out first. If it catches, the scratch is probably too deep to polish and needs paint.

Look at the bottom of a chip. Bare metal needs primer before the color, and soon: exposed steel rusts quickly. A chip that shows only primer needs color and clear.

Fix it yourself with our paint

• stone chips and scratches on a panel that is straight and unbroken;
• scuffs and scratches on a bumper with no crack, including over a radar, within the carmaker's limits (below);
• surface rust that hasn't made a hole: sand all of it off, then primer, then paint.

Take it to a body shop

• A dent. If the paint isn't cracked, a paintless dent repair technician can often push it out. A dent with cracked paint, a sharp crease, or one at the edge of a panel usually needs bodywork and paint.
• A cracked or torn bumper. The plastic has to be repaired or the cover replaced before any paint, and on bumpers with sensors carmakers mostly say replace it.
• Rust that has made a hole. The lasting fix is cutting the rusted metal out and welding in new metal.
• A collision. Carmakers have their own procedures after a crash: Ford requires every damaged car's systems to be scanned, even with no warning lights on, and Kia replaces the airbags, a crash sensor and the airbag control module after the front airbags go off.

We mix to the paint maker's formula for your code, but one code can come out slightly differently from car to car. The factory color varies with the plant, the paint supplier and how it was sprayed, which is why paint makers list variants of a code, and sun and weather change a car's paint over the years, panel by panel.

Test it before you paint the car. Clean and polish the paint around the repair, spray a test card the way you'll spray the car, put clear on it, let it dry, and hold it against the car in daylight.

On a visible panel, a body shop blends the new color out into the paint beside the repair, or onto the next panel, so a slight difference doesn't show. Blending hides a slight difference; it can't fix a wrong color.

For a guaranteed match, mail us a painted part from the car, like a fuel door, and we match the paint to it. How our color-match guarantee works.

One aerosol of your color, mixed to the code, plus the spray kit (primer, 2K clear, tack cloth, scuff pad and gloves) and a cleaner for the panel:

• Where is my paint code? Every make, one page
• Tri-coat paint: why two cans, and how to spray it
• Which sandpaper grits to use
• The color-match guide for painters
• Our color-match guarantee