Paint Thickness Gauges
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A paint thickness gauge tells you how much paint you're working with before you start taking any of it away. Factory paint runs somewhere around 100 to 150 microns total, and the clear coat you can safely polish is only a fraction of that, so knowing the number is the difference between confident correction and guessing. It also shows up repaints, body filler and panels that have already been cut, which is worth knowing whether you're detailing a car or buying one.
Paint Thickness Gauges
FAQ's: Paint Thickness Gauges
What the readings mean and whether you need one. These are the questions we get asked the most.
Still unsure? Ask us ›What paint thickness reading is safe to polish?
There's no single number, but there are numbers worth knowing.
A healthy factory panel usually reads somewhere between 100 and 150 microns in total, and that total includes primer, base coat and clear. The clear coat itself is often only 40 to 50 microns, and a heavy cutting compound pass can take a few microns each time. So the question isn't really how thick the paint is, it's how much clear you have left to spend.
Find your baseline first. Measure inside a door jamb, the door shuts or under the bootlid. Nobody polishes those areas, so whatever they read is close to what that car left the factory with. Now you've got a reference for the rest of the car rather than a number with nothing to compare it to.
Then measure the panels that get worked on. If the jamb reads 130 and the bonnet reads 80, that car has been polished hard, probably more than once, and you should treat it gently or not at all. A 10 or 20 micron difference is normal. Fifty is a warning.
The same approach finds the other outliers. A panel reading 250 microns has been repainted. One reading 400 or more has filler under it. Take readings across the whole car, doors, bonnet, roof and both sides, because the pattern tells you far more than any single figure.
A healthy factory panel usually reads somewhere between 100 and 150 microns in total, and that total includes primer, base coat and clear. The clear coat itself is often only 40 to 50 microns, and a heavy cutting compound pass can take a few microns each time. So the question isn't really how thick the paint is, it's how much clear you have left to spend.
Find your baseline first. Measure inside a door jamb, the door shuts or under the bootlid. Nobody polishes those areas, so whatever they read is close to what that car left the factory with. Now you've got a reference for the rest of the car rather than a number with nothing to compare it to.
Then measure the panels that get worked on. If the jamb reads 130 and the bonnet reads 80, that car has been polished hard, probably more than once, and you should treat it gently or not at all. A 10 or 20 micron difference is normal. Fifty is a warning.
The same approach finds the other outliers. A panel reading 250 microns has been repainted. One reading 400 or more has filler under it. Take readings across the whole car, doors, bonnet, roof and both sides, because the pattern tells you far more than any single figure.
Do I need a paint thickness gauge?
If you're polishing other people's cars, yes. If you're polishing your own, it depends how much correction you do.
For a detailer, it's insurance. Going through the clear on a customer's car is an expensive mistake and a gauge takes thirty seconds to rule it out. It also gives you something to show the customer when a panel has been repainted before you touched it.
For an enthusiast doing a light one step once a year, you'll probably never remove enough clear to matter. It becomes worth having the moment you start doing heavier correction work, or if you're looking at buying a used car and want to know what's been repaired.
That second use is one a lot of people don't think about. A gauge pays for itself the first time it finds filler in a car you were about to buy.
For a detailer, it's insurance. Going through the clear on a customer's car is an expensive mistake and a gauge takes thirty seconds to rule it out. It also gives you something to show the customer when a panel has been repainted before you touched it.
For an enthusiast doing a light one step once a year, you'll probably never remove enough clear to matter. It becomes worth having the moment you start doing heavier correction work, or if you're looking at buying a used car and want to know what's been repaired.
That second use is one a lot of people don't think about. A gauge pays for itself the first time it finds filler in a car you were about to buy.