January 2025 | PaintForCars.com

Why Lighting Is Important When Painting Your Car

Car painting relies heavily on precise, quality work, and nothing is more vital to achieving this than proper lighting.

Prepping a vehicle requires meticulous attention to detail. Ensuring all the surfaces are properly sanded and masked hinges on the painter’s ability to see fine details. Without bright, even lighting, it’s easy to miss spots that might later result in uneven paint or peeling.

Only in a brightly lit work area can a painter truly assess the flow and consistency of the paint, catching issues like mottling or poor blending. If you paint in a booth, make sure to regularly clean overspray areas so the lights and walls aren’t dimmed.

To ensure a perfect color match, particularly with metallic paints that require matching the flake size and pattern, most professionals prefer checking the color in natural sunlight. However, the innovation of hand-held, full-spectrum lighting tools has revolutionized color matching, allowing painters to replicate natural sunlight indoors and ensure the color is perfect regardless of weather conditions. These color-matching lights, though an investment, pay for themselves by reducing the need for costly redos due to lighting-induced errors.

Painting a car isn’t just about the painter’s skill; the equipment and work area matter, too. For high-quality paint jobs, the right lighting setup is non-negotiable. Paint for Cars stands ready with a selection of premium paint products and expert advice.

Which Sandpaper Grit Should I Use When Sanding My Car?

If you need to paint your car, you must strip the old paint. This is also a great time to smooth out any imperfections or work off any rust that’s built up. The best way to remove old paint from your car is to use sandpaper. It’s up to you what type of sander you want to use, though we don’t recommend sanding by hand if you’re stripping a whole car— save that for little touches on your new paint job.

The big thing about sanding is what grit to use. Lower numbers are harsher, more course, while higher numbers are finer. Let’s take a look at the most selected grits and how they’re used:

26-40: Pretty rare to use these, but sometimes you need to strip through several layers of paint and smooth out scrapes from tree limbs.
150: If the car was previously coated in thick enamel, you might need this density to get through.
240-320: This is more what you’re looking for to start a paint job, especially on newer model cars that have likely only been painted once before.
600: This is great for small errors in your paint job. If you run out of paint just before hitting an edge, you can even use this to wet sand the area for extra coverage.
1500-4000: For buffering and smoothing a finished paint job, removing any roughness or inconsistencies.

By having a selection of grits available, you can ensure the proper preparation and finishing touches that lead to a professional-quality paint job with high-quality paint kits from Paint for Cars.