When you’re looking for the best wax, you always want to get advice from a professional that will tell you exactly what will fit your car.
“I have a black Subaru STI, what will bring out the shine?”
“I have a red Honda Civic, what will make it shine”
Funny enough, I give the same answer to each person that asks me. There’s no specific wax that will work with a specific color or car. It just isn’t so.
You may believe it’s true from the marketing that manufacturers do, but the reality is, you probably see no difference between what wax you’ll use.
I don’t want to be a mood killer for you, but your car and paint is nothing special in terms to the type of wax you should be using. Let me explain..
Your Car’s Paint And It’s Clear Coat
Many people get confused on this part. Your paint has a clear coat on it. This clear coat is what makes the paint look shiny. Without that clear coat, your paint will not look shiny.
With me so far? 🙂
So the clear coat in your is clear (pretty obvious), but the micro swirls and scratches in your clear coat are whitish-grayish). You can’t technically see it individually, but as a whole (meaning the car) you can tell that the paint is faded or at least dull looking.
The biggest difference in whether or not you’ll be able to see more micro-scratches is if your paint is a dark color like red, blue, black, etc…
If your car is gray, white, or light blue, etc.. You’re going to have a tough time looking at the difference between a wax and no wax.
There will be a difference. Your car will look better. It just won’t be as noticeable as if you had a dark colored car.
Why A Wax Won’t Make The Biggest Difference
This is going to get a bit confusing (I’m not even sure that I understand what I’m about to say), but applying a wax to a clear coat doesn’t add more shine, but it hides or covers up the swirls and scratches.
The micro-scratches that you have on your clear coat are technically little valleys in the paint. So the wax will fill in those valleys and even it out with the rest of the clear coat. Which is what us detailers refer to being “flat” paint.
Once you’ve added a layer of wax and covered the micro scratches, there’s not much more you can do. Even if you add another layer of wax, you can’t add more shine because you’ve “maxed out” all the shine you can get out of it.
So it doesn’t matter if you apply wax A or wax B, you are only going to be able to get so much shine out of each wax.
Does that make sense?
Conclusion
So let’s bring it all home now..
You can buy whichever wax you want for your car. Generally speaking and for most of the time, you’re going to get the same results regardless of the brand that you buy.
Go ahead and spend hours reading up on the best wax for X type of car that has Y type of paint. But at the end of it all, your eye will only be able to tell so much of a difference.
If that minimal difference matters to you enough, then by all means, go for it. But if it doesn’t, then buy a wax within your budget and call it a day.