Sometimes the metal is fine and only the finish needs attention. Paint repair at our auto body shop covers exactly that: damage to the coating on an otherwise sound panel.

Why colors stop matching their own code

A paint code describes what left the factory. Your vehicle has since spent Vermont summers in ultraviolet and Vermont winters under salt spray, and the color has moved. Two vehicles built the same week in the same color can also differ, because paint varies between production batches.

So the code gets us close and no further. We spray a test card, hold it against the panel in daylight, adjust, and only commit once it disappears against the original.

Blending

A repaired area is rarely sprayed to the panel edge and stopped. Color is carried into the adjacent panel and faded out, so the transition falls in the middle of a surface where the eye does not look for a seam. Stopping hard at a panel gap is what makes a repair visible from three cars away in a parking lot.

Metallics and pearls need this most, since the flake orients differently depending on how it is laid down.

Spot repair versus refinishing a panel

Small, isolated damage in the middle of a large panel can sometimes be repaired locally. Damage near an edge, across a body line, or spread over a wide area generally needs the whole panel done. Attempting a spot where the conditions do not support one produces a halo that becomes more obvious as the repair cures.

We will tell you which applies rather than selling the smaller job and hoping.

One panel or several

Call (802) 782-5373 with photographs taken in daylight and out of direct sun, or bring the vehicle to South Main Street.