HOW MUCH DOES CAR PAINT REPAIR COST?
At our published DFW rates: small-part refinish — caps, handles, trim, painted entirely — $200–$500, a single panel repaint $500–$1,500, bumper cover refinish $500–$1,200, multi-panel blends $1,200–$2,500, half-vehicle partial repaints $3,000–$4,500, and full resprays $5,000–$8,500 ($7,500–$15,000+ for premium and custom work). What moves a job between lanes isn’t the scratch you see — it’s how many panels the match requires, because proper refinish blends into neighbors instead of stopping at a panel edge. And the booth time never strands you — a free loaner from the 50+ fleet rides along with any paint job here.
The Longer Answer
WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY BUYING WHEN YOU BUY PAINT WORK
Paint pricing confuses people because the visible damage and the billable work are different sizes. A key scratch down one door is “one panel” to your eye — but if the color is a metallic or pearl, the repair that disappears blends into the fender and quarter, and the job prices as a multi-panel blend ($1,200–$2,500) rather than a single-panel respray. Conversely, a deep chip on a flat surface with room to feather can genuinely stay in the $200–$500 small-part lane. The estimate’s job is assigning your damage the right lane and showing the why — which panels are damage, which are blend, what’s prep, what’s materials. A one-line “paint job: $900” quote hides exactly the decisions that decide whether you’ll see the repair in sunlight.
What’s inside the numbers: surface prep (the sanding, priming and sealing that outlast the color), the mix itself (read from your car with a spectrophotometer, proven on sprayout cards — the whole discipline in the paint-match answer), booth time, and cure. Tri-coat pearls and candy colors run the upper halves of every range because the mid-coat adds passes and judgment. And the full-respray decision ($5,000–$8,500) deserves honest math: on a car worth $6,000, a standard respray approaches the car’s value — sometimes the right call for a keeper, rarely for a flipper — while premium and custom finishes ($7,500–$15,000+) belong to cars whose value or meaning justifies them. We’ll tell you which side of that line your car sits on, even when the answer costs us a sale.
The insurance angle: when the paint damage came from a covered event — a crash, vandalism, hail that cracked the finish — these same published rates get billed to the carrier and your out-of-pocket is typically your deductible, once. Key scratches specifically are a comprehensive claim with math that usually favors filing: the keyed-car answer runs it. Cash jobs get the same rates with no mystery: bring the car, get the panel-by-panel read in writing, and compare us against anybody — the numbers were public before you walked in.
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