Scratches to your car are extremely disheartening, especially when they catch your eye every day. They often appear from nowhere and you wish you could just get rid of them without the stress of a big repair job, or bill.

Well it is possible to remove the car scratch at home, without needing to send your car to a professional. Provided it is not a deep scratch, using car polish to remove scratches is a simple and effective way to buff out scratches on your car, as long as you know how to do so correctly.

For advice on how to buff out scratches on your car, follow our tips and step-by-step advice.

Using Car Polish To Remove Scratches

If your car has a blemish which is small, but distinguishable to the eye, it is likely something you can’t avoid noticing and will want to repair as soon as possible to get your car looking like new again.

Using car polish is a good way to buff out scratches on your car, as long as the scratch itself is not too deep, and that it does not extend too deep into the paint work, or reach the metal body work. This is an important point because there are several levels of paintwork to a car, which will affect how well car polish will be able to remove the scratch.

The top layer of paintwork is known as the clear coat, which is a thick and protective translucent layer on the car’s surface. Beneath this is the car’s individual paint colour and then the primer, which sit on the bare bodywork (metal) of the car. A small and shallow scratch to the clear coat alone can be rectified by using a slightly abrasive car polish, but only if the scratch does not reach the paint colour or deeper metalwork of the car. If the scratch goes any deeper then it is worth looking at a professional solution.

This is because a car polish substance has a slightly abrasive manner, which effectively rubs down the clear coat of the damaged area, to lessen the appearance of small scratches and imperfections to the bodywork. Car polish does not build the top layer of paintwork back up, so if you do use polish to buff out scratches on your car, you will want to wax it afterwards.

How to Buff out a Scratches on Your Car

The technique used to successfully buff out scratches on your car is straightforward, but please bear in mind that the success will depend on the nature of the scratch.

Let’s take a look at the step by step process.

1. Inspect the scratch with a thumbnail to make sure the scratch is not too deep. You should be able to run your nail over the scratch without stopping.

If your nail runs over the scratch then it will be visible to the naked eye, due to the light bouncing of a scratch, but will have damaged the top layer of clear paintwork only.

2. Carefully clean the area of any debris or dust, particularly small stones, making sure it is thoroughly cleaned and dried before continuing.
3. Apply car polish using a buffing motion over the scratch to slightly wear away the clear coat layer, reducing the appearance of any scratches in the paintwork.
4. Use a clear wax to replace and visibly remove imperfection in the paintwork, adding a protective layer again afterwards, gently building up the area with a top coat of clear car wax.

Does Buffing Remove Scratches Permanently?

Superficial scratches can be buffed out using a car polish, providing the damage is to the top coat of clear paintwork only and can be smoothed out so that it is no longer visible.

By removing the visibly scratched clear coat with car polish in a buffing motion, you will be able to remove light scratches that catch the light due to chips or grooves in the paintwork.

Using polish to buff out scratches in your car will mean you need to replace the top layer of clear coat with a wax, which will reseal and protect the area once the scratch has been buffed out.

What if Scratches Are Too Deep?

Unfortunately, each scratch is different as well as complex – meaning they may be deeper in places and reach deeper levels of paintwork in places, depending on what caused the scratch.

For small and superficial damage, follow our simple steps to buff out scratches on your car with car polish. Should this not work successfully, you may be dealing with a deeper scratch after all. This will need further investigation and can in fact be more troublesome than a dent.

A deep-rooted scratch is trickier to repair, because when a scratch reaches deeper levels of paintwork, the damaged area will likely need stripping back to replace the colour and even primer level of paintwork of the car.

Delaying taking care of this trickery and more complex scratch will risk exposing your car’s metal work to the elements when on the road, particularly rust, so it is always best to treat scratches to paintwork with urgency.

Use a Trusted Scratch Repair Technician

At ChipsAway Ireland, we understand how complex scratches to your car can be and how frustrating they are following an unfortunate incident. We hope that our advice and steps can help you rectify the damage at home, but should you need further assistant we are here to help.

We are experienced in all kinds of scratch repairs and offer quick and efficient scratch repair services at one of our nearby body shop repair centres.

Don’t delay, contact us now for a free paint repair estimate.