A customer rings three Calgary detailers for a ceramic coating on a two-year-old SUV. The quotes come back at $750, $1,400, and $2,300.
From where they're standing, that looks like one honest price and two people trying it on. It isn't. Those three quotes are usually for three genuinely different jobs — but nobody explained that, so the customer picks the cheapest and everyone loses.
Understanding the spread is how you stop competing on a number.
The coating is the cheap part
Here's the thing most customers get backwards: the bottle costs a fraction of the job.
What they're paying for is the preparation. A coating is transparent and permanent-ish — it locks in whatever surface you apply it to. Put a good coating over swirled, marred paint and you've sealed the swirls under a glossy layer for the next three years. The customer will see them every time the sun hits the hood.
So the real question behind any coating quote is: how much correction is included before the coating goes on?
| Quote level | What the prep usually is | Hours |
|---|---|---|
| $700 – $900 | Wash, decontamination, single-stage machine polish or none at all | 6 – 10 |
| $1,000 – $1,500 | Decontamination plus a proper one-step correction, jambs and trim done | 12 – 18 |
| $1,600 – $2,500+ | Multi-stage correction, wheels off, glass and trim coated, longer-warranty product | 20 – 35 |
The $750 quote is not a scam and the $2,300 quote is not a rip-off. They're a same-day job and a three-day job.
What legitimately moves the price
Paint condition. A garage-kept lease return and a five-year-old truck that lived on Highway 2 need completely different amounts of work. This is why quoting a coating sight-unseen is a mistake — you are guessing at the single biggest variable.
Paint hardness. Some manufacturers run notoriously soft, thin paint that marrs if you look at it wrong and takes far longer to correct safely. Others are hard enough that cutting takes real effort. Both cost you time in opposite directions.
Vehicle size. A three-row SUV has close to double the panel area of a compact. Price by size tier and stop absorbing that.
Coverage. Paint only, or paint plus wheels, glass, trim, and interior? Each of those is a separate product, separate prep, and separate time.
Product and warranty. Longer-warranty professional coatings cost more per bottle, but more importantly they usually carry certification requirements and registration obligations. That's real cost.
Present three tiers, not one number
The single most effective change you can make to how you sell coatings: stop quoting a price and start offering a choice.
When a customer has one number, the only decision available is yes or no — and the comparison happens somewhere you can't see it, against a quote you'll never get to explain. Three options change the question to which one.
Something like:
Essential — around $800 Decontamination, single-stage polish, 2-year coating on paint. For newer vehicles in good condition where the goal is protection and easy washing.
Complete — around $1,500 Full decontamination, one-step correction removing the majority of light swirls, 5-year coating on paint, plus wheels and glass. This is what most people actually want.
Signature — around $2,400 Multi-stage correction, wheels removed and coated inside and out, trim and glass included, longest-warranty product, plus a complimentary maintenance wash at six months.
Put the middle one where you want them to land and make it obviously the best value. Most customers take the middle option when there is one. Without it, the same customer is deciding between your number and silence.
Say what it doesn't do
Overselling coatings is the fastest way to earn a refund conversation.
A ceramic coating gives you hydrophobic behaviour, real chemical and UV resistance, meaningfully easier washing, and better gloss. It does not make paint scratch-proof, it does not stop rock chips, and — this matters in Alberta — it does nothing about hail.
Write the limits into your quote. It reads as confidence rather than hedging, and it means the one customer in twenty who was expecting armour finds out before you've done the work rather than after.
The same honesty applies to maintenance. Coatings need proper washing to keep performing. A customer who runs it through a brush wash every two weeks and then complains the water isn't beading needed to hear that on day one.
Deposits are not optional on this job
A coating is one to three days of your capacity, plus product you've bought for that specific vehicle. A no-show here isn't an inconvenience, it's the worst financial event of your month.
Take 25–30% at booking. Nobody spending $1,500 on their car objects to a deposit — it reads as normal for a job at this level, and frankly a customer who won't put anything down on a two-day booking is telling you something useful.
Also set a clear reschedule window. For a multi-day job, 72 hours is fair, and saying so upfront prevents the argument entirely.
The part that actually makes the money
Coatings are a great sale. Coating maintenance is a better business.
A coated vehicle needs proper washing to perform, and the customer who just spent $1,500 has every reason to protect it. Sell a maintenance plan alongside the coating — quarterly or biannual decontamination washes with a topper — and price it into the package rather than pitching it later.
You get predictable recurring revenue from customers who have already made the expensive decision, and they get a coating that still looks right in year three. The alternative is a customer who slowly ruins your work and quietly blames the coating.
Making the sale easy to say yes to
Three tiers only work if the customer can see them, compare them, and book one without a back-and-forth over text. Most coating sales die in the gap between "sounds good, let me think about it" and never hearing back.
PayDash lets you list your coating tiers as bookable services with the deposit built into the booking, so the customer picks the package, pays to hold the slot, and the job is on your calendar — while they're still excited about it rather than three days later.
See how PayDash works for detailers →
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