HOW MUCH DOES CAR PAINT REPAIR COST?
At our published DFW rates: small spot and touch-up work $200–$500, a single panel repaint $500–$1,000, bumper cover refinish $500–$1,200, multi-panel blends $1,200–$2,500, half-vehicle partial repaints $2,000–$4,500, and full resprays $3,500–$7,500 ($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.
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 spot 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 ($3,500–$7,500) 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.
Related Questions