Stone chip repair, done the way that suits the car
Chips on the bonnet and front end are the most common damage we see and the most commonly oversold. Some are worth touching in for £60. Some are not worth touching at all. And some have already gone far enough that the panel wants refinishing. We will tell you which one you have before you spend anything.
What a stone chip actually is
A stone thrown up at seventy takes a small cone out of the lacquer, the colour and sometimes the primer underneath. How much it matters depends entirely on how deep it went. Run a fingernail across it: if it catches, the chip has gone through at least the clear coat. If you can see a grey or white layer, you are down to primer. If you can see metal, the clock has started, because bare steel in British weather rusts, and rust spreads sideways underneath paint that still looks perfect from above.
That is the real reason to deal with chips: not how they look today, but what they turn into. A chip repaired this year costs sixty pounds. The same chip left for three winters becomes a rust bubble, and a rust bubble becomes a panel.
The three honest options
There are only three, and the right one is decided by the car, not by what we would rather sell.
1. Leave it alone
If the chip has not broken through the colour, and the car is older, leaving it is a perfectly reasonable answer. We will say so. There is no sense charging you for work that changes nothing you can see and prevents nothing you should worry about.
2. Touch in
The chip is cleaned out, filled with colour mixed to your car's paint code, levelled and lacquered. It stops the rust and it stops the chip catching the light. Under close inspection in direct sun you may still find it. From a normal distance you will not. This is the £60 job, and for most cars with a handful of chips it is the sensible one.
3. Refinish the panel
When chips are spread across a whole bonnet, or one has already rusted, the panel is prepared and resprayed properly. This is the only option that makes the damage genuinely disappear, and on a bonnet peppered with forty chips it usually costs less than touching in forty chips one at a time. Priced as a panel, from £180 including VAT depending on the panel and the car.
What it costs
| Work | From | Typically takes |
|---|---|---|
| Chip touch-in, small area | £60 inc VAT | Often while you wait |
| Several chips, one area | £60–£120 inc VAT | Same day |
| Bonnet refinished | £180 inc VAT | 1–2 days |
| Front bumper refinished | £288 inc VAT | 1–2 days |
Prices include paint, materials, labour and VAT, and come from the same rate card our estimators quote from — not a separate web price. Send a photo and we will give you the figure for your car before you bring it in.
How we do it
- Look at it properly. In daylight, with the paint depth checked. A chip that has gone to metal is a different job from one that has not, and you cannot tell from a phone photo alone.
- Tell you which of the three options applies. Including, where it is true, that the honest answer is to leave it.
- Mix to your paint code and spray out a test card. Paint that has weathered for five years does not match the factory code exactly, so the card is checked against your panel, not against a chart.
- Repair. Chip cleaned out, filled, levelled, lacquered. Or, for a panel, prepared, primed, sprayed and blended into the surrounding panels.
- Check it in the light before you see it, and hand it back with a 12-month workmanship warranty.
What people get wrong about stone chips
“A touch-up pen will do it.” It will stop the rust, which is the important part, and for that reason a pen is better than nothing. It will also leave a raised blob of paint that catches the light from every angle, because a pen cannot level the repair. If you only care about the rust, use the pen. If you care how it looks, do not.
“Chips mean the paint is bad.” They do not. Chips mean the car has been driven on a motorway behind a lorry. Factory paint is thin by design, and every car collects them.
“I will get the whole car done at some point.” A full respray on a car with a chipped bonnet is almost always the wrong money. Do the bonnet.
See the work
We photograph jobs as they go through the booth — stripped, prepared, sprayed and refitted, in our own spray booth rather than sent out. See photos of real jobs from our workshop.
Stone chip repair: your questions answered
Is it worth repairing stone chips at all?
On a newer car, yes, and sooner rather than later. A chip that has gone through to bare metal will rust from the inside out, and once rust is under the surrounding paint the repair stops being a touch-in and becomes a panel. On an older car with chips across the whole bonnet the honest answer is often that refinishing the bonnet costs less than touching in forty chips individually, and looks far better afterwards. We will tell you which of those two you are looking at before you spend anything.
Can you make a chip disappear completely?
A touch-in fills the chip and stops it rusting. Under a close look in direct sunlight you may still find it, because filling a chip is not the same as replacing the paint around it. If you want it genuinely invisible, the panel has to be prepared and refinished, and we will quote both so you can choose. We would rather set that expectation now than hand the car back to a disappointed customer.
How many chips before it is cheaper to respray the panel?
There is no fixed number, because it depends on how spread out they are and how deep. As a rough guide, a handful of chips in one area is a touch-in job; chips peppered across a whole bonnet usually means refinishing the bonnet. Send us a photo and we will tell you which side of the line your car falls on.
Can you do a chip repair while I wait?
Small touch-in work is usually same day and often while you wait, depending on how busy the booth is. Refinishing a panel needs the paint to cure properly between stages, so that is a day or two. We will tell you which when we see it, not after we have the keys.
Will the colour match my car?
We mix to your car's own paint code and spray out a test card before anything goes near the panel. On metallics and pearls the repair is blended into the surrounding area rather than stopping at a hard edge, because paint on a car that has been in the weather for a few years no longer matches the code exactly.
Related work we do
Scratch repair · SMART repairs · Bumper repair · Dent removal · Full and panel resprays · Alloy wheel refurbishment