Car Wax and Car Paint Sealant. When to use them
A car enthusiast will find few things more pleasurable than standing back and admiring the results of a few hours labour on a Sunday afternoon after having washed and waxed his car.
If you are interested in maintaining that showroom look you need more than elbow grease. You will also need quality products, especially when it comes to getting a nice shine onto your car using wax or paint sealant. Both will give you a lasting shine and both need to be applied regularly, so what’s the difference?
Ok, first off, wax and car paint sealant achieve the same desired effect. They are both paint protectors. They are designed to be applied after you have polished your car’s paintwork. The tiny abrasions and scratches in your paintwork is reduced or removed with polish. As it is designed to restore your paintwork to its original colour and shine, polish is slightly abrasive which also means that it will remove any wax that was previously applied leaving your paintwork unprotected. This is where wax and paint sealant comes in. It is applied after the polish has done its work in order to protect it.
I hope you have picked up on the fact that because the two types of product do the same thing then you don’t need to use both at the same time. Some people think that they need to apply paint sealant before they apply wax. This is not the case. You can do if you so choose but you don’t really gain anything. So, you have a personal choice to make. Paint sealant or wax.
Right, back to the original question. What’s the difference?
The ingredients make all the difference. If the list of ingredients shoes any reference to a natural wax such as Carnauba then it is a wax. If it is made from synthetic ingredients and contains no naturally occurring wax then it is a paint sealant.
However, there is another problem. There are no laws to stop a car sealant manufacturer calling their product a wax. The reason they do this is that that majority of people who will buy their product know they want to wax their car. They will therefore look for a wax in the shop. The majority of people won’t care whether it is synthetic or not as long as it does the job they want it to do.
So, in the end, you have a personal choice to make. Look for a wax if you want to only work with a natural wax product. If you prefer to work with synthetics then look for a paint sealant. Don’t go by the product name though. You need to look at the ingredients, just to be sure.
About the Author
Some waxes and sealants perform better than others and some are more expensive than others. At the Car Care Shop we have lots of them to choose from.
GRAPE GLOSS SPRAY WAX