Ceramic coating in Hillingdon

The day

What happens on a Hillingdon drive between 8am and dusk

Morning: the correction. The coating seals in whatever is under it, so the first half of the day is spent getting the paint right. A decontamination wash takes off the airport film and the brake dust; a clay lifts the rest; then the machine polisher comes out, panel by panel under lights, to remove the swirls that years of brush washes cut into the clear coat and the faint etching that a summer under a Northwood lime leaves behind. On a car under three years old this is a light pass. On an older car from under the approach it is the bulk of the day, and your washer will tell you so when they see the paint.

Afternoon: the coating. The paint is wiped down to bare, clean lacquer and the ceramic goes on, one panel at a time, levelled and checked under the lights. It flashes within minutes and is touch dry within the hour, but it keeps hardening for 24 hours, and in that time it must not get wet: no rain, no heavy dew, nothing dripping from a tree. That is why a drive, a garage or a covered bay in Ruislip, Ickenham or Eastcote is the ideal place, and a street space under a plane tree or in the open under the approach is not.

The next two years. The airport film still lands in Harlington and Hayes, the M4 still fires brake dust at the wheels, the limes still drip in June. None of it bonds. A wash every few weeks with a pH neutral soap and a two bucket method lifts it, and a rinse after a bad week does what a detail used to. Brush washes and harsh traffic film removers are the only things that shorten a coating's life; the Deluxe Exterior and the Essential Exterior on the booking page are both safe.

Who it is for

Drives in the north, undercrofts in the south, the airport in between

Ickenham and South Harefield are 87 percent car owning with a third of homes detached; Ruislip is 37 percent detached. The drives there hold the cars a coating suits best: new or nearly new, on a PCP that will be settled or bought outright to run for years. In the south of the borough the case is different but stronger: a new car in a Hayes Village or West Drayton undercroft sits closest to the approach and goes grey fastest, and a coating applied in the garage or the covered bay is the one thing that keeps it looking new. Heathrow's shift workers, whose cars get washed at odd hours when there is time, get the most from a surface that rinses clean rather than one that has to be scrubbed.

Timing follows the weather and the gritters. September or early October puts the coating on before the salt; April to June, once the gritters have stopped, is the other easy window. Winter is possible in a dry spell of two days, and the washer will move a booking rather than risk a damp cure. Since the clocks went back on 25 October the day starts early and the two day forecast matters more than the light. A car that is not a keeper, or whose paint is too far gone to correct economically, is better served by the Exterior Detail, and your washer will say so rather than coat it.

Coatings we do in Hillingdon

• New car, Ruislip drive, first winter ahead: light correction, coating, done before the salt.
• Three year old PCP car in Ickenham, being kept: full correction for the swirls, then the coating.
• Black EV in a Hayes Village undercroft: coating in the covered bay, because black under the approach goes grey fastest.
• Northwood car with lime etching: correction assessed honestly first; coating if the paint comes back.
• Heathrow shift worker's car: coating, so the odd hours wash is a rinse rather than a scrub.
• Coated car at the two year mark: a lighter correction and a fresh coating, because the paint was protected.

More on this: how a ceramic coating works and exterior detailing in Hillingdon.