The best tips and tricks to remove car scratches

Dents and scratches on the paint of your car are of course very annoying. Whether you have just bought a new car and this is the very first damage, or whether it happens to your five-year-old car, which you keep in tiptop condition. Fortunately, it is often easy to remove scratches yourself at home. There are a number of nonsense products on the market that are of little use to make the scratch less visible or even remove it completely. Especially for items from a budget store, the rule is: cheap is expensive. But there are also a number of tried and tested products to get started with at home, which can polish away any damage with minimal effort. It is useful to have a little knowledge of how a layer of car paint is constructed, and which types of products can ensure a neat repair for a particular scratch. Here you can read the best tips and tricks for removing car scratches.

How do scratches get on your car?

Car paint is made up of different layers, which are intended to protect the metal of your car from weathering, rust and other harmful influences. And of course a nice layer of paint also ensures that your car looks fantastic. The paint of a car is of high quality, and composed in layers to be resistant to most damage. Yet it is easy to get scratches on your car. Especially in the Netherlands, where space is limited and contact with your car can easily occur. Scratches can occur if you drive too close to a wall or barrier (for example from a parking garage) is driving. Or by playing children, inattentive supermarket visitors with a shopping cart, and by cyclists who pass too close to your car. And then there are also quite a few natural events that can violently remove the paint from your car. Falling branches, splashing stones, and there are even certain birds that for some reason enjoy working your beautiful, shiny paint with their sharp beaks. 

How is car paint constructed?

It is important to know how car paint is built up. This way you can diagnose yourself what kind of scratch you have on your bike, sorry, car. And which remedy will help in your situation. You should know that car paint consists of multiple layers, each with their own function. 

• First, a layer of primer is applied to the metal of the body. The color of this primer is light gray to white. The purpose of the primer is to ensure that the upper layers of paint adhere better to the metal of your car. 
• When a base coat is dry, the desired shade of paint is applied there in the factory. This is the paint that determines the color of your car. But it is not yet the top layer.
• The color layer is sprayed over with a layer of clear lacquer, which ensures that the color layer shines. This top layer is also composed in such a way that it becomes extremely hard when cured. The clear lacquer is therefore the most important protective layer on your car. 

Different Types of Car Scratches and Their Repair

Now that you know what each layer of paint on a car looks like, you can see how deep the damage is for each scratch. This will give you a starting point to apply a suitable product to the damage. 

Deep scratches

Do you see silver metal in the scratch? This is a very deep scratch that reaches the metal of your car and can only be caused by considerable force. Unfortunately, you cannot repair this type of scratch yourself. Go to the garage to have the car provided with a new coat of paint on the scratch. Do not wait too long with this: paint is not only beautiful, but also protects the metal of your bodywork from rust. If the metal starts to rust, this can cause structural damage to the car and also cause the paint around the damage to quickly crumble further.

Is the scratch white or light gray in color? This is a deep scratch: the scratch extends to the base coat. You will probably have to look closely and from several angles before you see the white of this layer - a magnifying glass can help you with this. The do-it-yourself solution for a deep scratch to the base coat is a touch-up pen. With this touch-up pen, you can touch up the scratched-off color paint with a brush. To do this, you choose a color paint with the right shade. You can find the color shade of your paint layer as a color number, which is often printed on a sticker in the door opening of your car. This ensures that you use exactly the right color paint, and that the scratch is as invisible as possible. 

Apply the varnish carefully with the brush according to the instructions. Or, if it is a very narrow scratch, with a toothpick, a pin or the edge of a piece of paper. The more carefully you apply such a new layer of varnish to the scratch, the less visible it will be.

Once the new paint has dried, you can use a so-called scratch filler on top. These agents fill the clear coat, which has also been scratched away, and ensure that the paint layer is protected again. Alternatively, you can use a scratch remover, which gently polishes the paint around the scratch and makes the deeper scratch less visible. By using one of these two treatment methods, you will get the best result, and you can ensure that the scratch is no longer visible to the naked eye.

Shallow scratches

Is there a scratch on your car, but you can't see a white layer in it? Then the paint is damaged down to the color paint. You don't need to use a touch-up pen for this, but you can fill the scratch and make it practically invisible using a scratch filler. A scratch remover also helps you to remove the sharp edges of the scratch, and thus make the opening smoother. If you do this carefully, there is a good chance that the scratch will actually no longer be visible after treatment. 

Is there a very shallow scratch that you can only see from certain angles? This is a light scratch where only the clear coat has been worn away, and often not even in its entirety. These are scratches that mainly occur on car parts that are used intensively. For example, by keys that slide along the door opening or the keyhole of the tailgate. And on the front and on the hood, against which flying objects often bounce while driving. You can treat these scratches in several ways. If the scratch is deep enough, you can use scratch filler. Another good option is to use a scratch remover, which evens out the scratch so that it is no longer noticeable compared to the paint around it.