Wondering if you can or need to apply wax over a professional ceramic coating is a common question. The simple answer is yes, spending hours waxing on—waxing off on paintwork that’s been protected with the brilliance of nano-tech ceramic is something you can do. It won’t do any real harm (more on that in a mo.).
But the real question to ask is this:
Should I wax over ceramic coating?
OK, so there are a bucket-load of products out there that claim to be ideal to add over the top of a nano-ceramic coating. The car product market is worth billions of dollars. So, Turtle Wax et al. put their best advertising brains on the case to sell us the “if you care about your car you need to spend countless hours of your spare time buffing and polishing with our products” line.
However, a high-quality ceramic coating is designed to do its job when fully exposed to the elements. It has strong hydrophobic properties, causing any water to bead and roll away. As this happens, it grabs hold of contaminants on the surface and takes them along for the ride.
While you shouldn’t consider this to mean ceramic coating is self-cleaning (another advertising lie), it does help the car appear cleaner for longer and makes the washing process far less labor-intensive.
So, if you add wax to the surface of a ceramic-coated car, all you do is prevent the surface from working as it should.
But it goes further than that… A wax layer will sit on top of that expensive ceramic technology, absorbing all the dirt and other nasties into its stickiness. This is because the natural characteristics of wax (which contains lubricants and oils) are designed to do just that. The poor old ceramic coating and its wonderful hydrophobic efforts are thus rendered useless…
This causes that heart-breakingly beautiful sheen that ceramic coatings are renowned for to become muted and dull.
However, this sad tale gets worse… To completely remove said wax from ceramic-coated paintwork requires the use of chemical products. While a ceramic coating is uber-tough, it’s not completely bulletproof. Those chemicals (or a clay bar process) can cause damage to the ceramic itself (especially lower quality ones). And don’t even get us started on polish, which will definitely strip ceramic coating away.
The takeaway is this…. If you’ve gone to the expense of having a nano-ceramic coating applied to your pride and joy, the following is all you need to do to enhance its looks for many years to come:
Being as ceramic coating and other paint protection products are our world, there’s not much we don’t know about them. But we certainly appreciate that not everyone is as PPF and ceramic coating nerdy as we are…
That’s why we have no issue with answering any of your questions, such as, “Can you wax over ceramic coating?”
We love seeing paintwork-protected masterpieces cruising the Florida roads. If you demand the best paint protection for your ride, then we need to talk.
Head to https://www.autosupershield.com to start your journey and hit us up today to discuss your ceramic coating, PPF, and/or window tinting needs.
About how we can help with your vehicles specific needs.
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