What is Vinyl Wrap:
Vinyl wrap is an alternative to a traditional way of painting cars. Instead of spraying the colour onto the car we use vinyl film. Vinyl film is a thin and flexible material, which is made out of PVC, and is typically 3-4 mil thick. It comes from the factory with specially formulated adhesive on the back that safely adheres to the surface of the car. The material possesses self healing properties. Companies like 3M, Avery and Arlon are among the most famous Vinyl Wrap manufacturers.
Vinyl Wrap Features:
FINISHES:
Vinyl film comes in a variety of finishes, which allows you to be very creative when it comes to picking the right colour and finish for your car. Depending on personal preferences and the final look you are going for, you can choose gloss, matte, satin, pearlescent, metallic, chrome, carbon fibre, brushed or colour flip finish. You can also customize the look of your car by going for a fully printed design.
OPACITY:
Material is fully opaque, which means that there is no colour difference between different panels of the car. Even if the paint on parts of your car varies in colour, vinyl can fix that.
SELF-HEALING:
Vinyl comes with a built in layer of laminate, which allows it to self heal light scratches under the effect of heat.
Vinyl Wrap vs Paint:
While both, paint and vinyl serve the same purpose, they do so differently.
COLOUR MISMATCH:
Due to the nature of paint, sometimes you can see slight colour mismatch between plastic and metal panels on painted cars. Since vinyl film is fully opaque, this issue is fully eliminated.
TIME:
It only takes 2 to 4 days to fully change the colour of the exterior. Adhesive is fully cured within 48 hours after installation is complete. In contrast, painting a car takes a week of labour, with an additional month to fully cure the paint.
PRICE:
Cost is another interesting topic to consider when deciding between wrapping and painting. Cost of painting the car varies greatly depending on finish and colour complexity. This isn’t the case with vinyl wraps. Most colours and finishes are within 10% cost difference. That means that painting the car in basic colours will cost you about the same as wrapping your car with matte, colour flow or metallic vinyl.
ALTERATION:
With vinyl wraps you can create a new outfit for your car that will make it truly yours. You can change the outfit as often as you want. Removing of a vinyl wrap is a pretty straight forward process that is safe for OEM paint and doesn’t take long to complete. New vinyl colours are released annually so there is always a new outfit to look forward to!
MAINTANANCE:
Most noteworthy, maintenance of vinyl wrap is not complicated either. We always recommend hand washing your wrapped car, but practice shows that vinyl can withstand a pressure wash as long as installation was performed properly. Check out a set of recommendations we have put together to help you learn about how to properly take care of your wrap. Self healing of small scuffs means that you can forget about cut polishing. In case of a more significant damage to the film, you only need to rewrap damaged panels. Rewrapping damaged panels requires significantly less work than repainting it, which translates into a lower cost. Full opacity of film ensures a perfect colour match.