Ceramic coating across West London and Heathrow

Four corridors

Why each part of the west coats, and where it cures

The M4 corridor: Hounslow, Feltham, Southall, Slough

The approaches of Europe's busiest airport run over the TW post town and Southall, and the film that lands is oily, slightly acidic and holds water; on bare lacquer it etches over a season, on ceramic it sits and rinses. Slough adds three motorways' brake dust. This is the corridor where a coating earns its keep fastest, and also where curing it is hardest, because the film lands overnight too: a garage, a carport or a covered bay under a Hounslow tower is the place, and a street space in a Southall terrace is not, in which case the Exterior Detail is the honest alternative.

The A40: Ealing, Hanwell, Greenford, Northolt

The Queen of the Suburbs is a city of limes and planes, and honeydew bakes into rings on every car parked under them from June to September; the Western Avenue adds iron to the wheels. A Pitshanger or Ealing Common drive is a good place to cure a coating as long as it is not directly under a tree, and a coated car there needs a rinse after a bad week rather than a detail after a bad summer.

The Metropolitan line: Harrow

Metroland's avenues were planted a century ago and the drives beneath them hold some of the newest cars in the west. A new car coated before its first summer under the trees keeps its value to the end of the lease; an older one gets its correction assessed honestly first.

The river: Staines, Twickenham, Sunbury

River towns coat for the damp. A car between the Thames and the Colne, or on the Twickenham riverside, spends the winter wet, and salt on wet paint for months is what dulls it; a coated car beads the water off and the salt with it. September, before the gritters, is the month to book here, and a drive set back from the river is the place.

The day

Morning correction, afternoon coating, a dry night

The coating seals in whatever is under it, so the morning is spent getting the paint right: a decontamination wash, the iron remover, a clay to lift the sap and the airport film, then machine polishing panel by panel under lights to remove the swirls that years of brush washes have cut into the clear coat. On a car under three years old that is a light pass; on an older car from under the approach it is most of the day, and your washer will say so when they see the paint. The ceramic goes on in the afternoon, flashes in minutes, and hardens for 24 hours, during which nothing can land on it: no rain, no dew, no drips from a plane tree.

Hounslow's gritters go out from mid November with Ealing's, Harrow's and Spelthorne's, so September and early October put the coating on before the salt, and April to June is the other easy window; winter works 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. The ULEZ covers all of these boroughs at £12.50 a day for a non compliant car, and a coated car washed on the drive pays nothing that day. Afterwards: pH neutral soap, two buckets, every few weeks, never a brush wash; the Deluxe Exterior and the Essential Exterior on the booking page are both coating safe.

Coatings we do across the west

• Black EV in a Hounslow tower's covered bay: coating, because black under the approach goes grey fastest.
• New car on a Harrow avenue: light correction and the coating before its first summer under the limes.
• Three year old PCP car in Ealing, being kept: full correction for the honeydew rings, then the coating.
• Staines car that spends the winter wet: coating in September, so the salt beads off.
• Slough company car being bought out: correction for three motorways' iron and tar, then the coating.
• Southall terrace car with no garage: the Exterior Detail instead, honestly.

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