Technician spray painting a car in the PPG waterborne booth at Stow Smash Repairs

Spray painting matched to factory. Not near enough.

Scratches, resprays and colour changes, matched by machine and finished by eye.

Spray painting inside the PPG waterborne booth

Spray Painting

Stow Smash Repairs paints cars in a sealed booth at our Artarmon workshop, serving the North Shore since 1965. We read your colour with a spectrophotometer, spray test cards in PPG waterborne paint, and check them against your panel in daylight. Repairs are blended into the panels beside them so the join disappears. One panel or the whole car, the standard is the same.

Freshly primed panel ready for the paint booth at Stow Smash Repairs

How We Do It

Reading actual paint color using a handheld spectrophotometer at Stow Smash Repairs

Freshly refinished panel checked for colour and finish at Stow Smash Repairs

Panel stripped back to bare metal ready for priming at Stow Smash Repairs

Close-up of seamless paint blend transition between panels at Stow Smash Repairs

01 / 05Read the colour.

Step 01
Read the colour.
The spectrophotometer reads your actual paint, not the code on the door jamb. Twenty year old paint has faded from factory, and we match what’s there now.
Step 02
Prove it in daylight.
We spray test cards and hold them against your panel outside. The computer gets us close. The eye gets it right.
Step 03
Prep properly.
Repairs are primed, blocked and checked flat before colour. Paint magnifies whatever sits under it.
Step 04
Spray in the booth.
Sealed, filtered and temperature controlled. Dust in the air becomes dirt in your clear coat, so the air matters as much as the gun.
Step 05
Blend the neighbours.
Colour is walked off into the adjacent panels so no hard edge shows. Then the clear is cut and polished back to factory gloss.

The computer gets us close. The eye gets it right.

Common Jobs

01 / 03

Clear coat peeling on the roof and bonnet.

Peeling clear is sun damage, and it only spreads. Polish won’t fix it because the failure is in the coat itself. Those panels need sanding back and repainting. Caught early, it stays a two panel job instead of five.

A sandblasted bonnet can be repainted as one panel, chips filled and primed properly first. Touch-up pens hide one chip and highlight fifty. If the chips have started rusting, we treat the steel before anything goes over it.

A mismatched panel usually means someone sprayed to the paint code instead of the car, or skipped the blend. We re-read the surrounding panels and blend the repair in so the colour walks off invisibly.

What It Costs

Single panel, bonnet or bumper respray price.: A bumper or single panel is the entry point. Blending into neighbours adds panels but is what makes the job invisible.
Why does a proper respray cost so much?: Most of a respray is preparation you never see. Stripping, priming, blocking flat, masking, and hours in the booth. Cheap resprays skip the prep, and the finish says so within a year.
Wrap or respray for a colour change?: Similar money, different lifespan, different logic. We wrote an honest comparison with real numbers. Wrap vs Respray →

Common Questions

How does paint matching actually work?

We read your paint with a spectrophotometer, then spray test cards in PPG waterborne paint and check them against your panel in daylight. The computer gets us close. The eye gets it right. That last step is what you’re paying for.

My scratch is too deep to buff out. What now?

If your fingernail catches in it, it’s through the clear coat and polishing won’t save it. That panel needs paint. If it doesn’t catch, we can likely machine it out the same day.

My car was keyed. What’s the repair process?

A key line down two panels usually means repainting both and blending the neighbours. Done properly, the colour walks off invisibly. It’s a vandalism claim on most policies. We photograph and write it up for you.

Where to next

01
Bent metal under the bad paint? It gets straightened first, same building. Panel Beating →
02
Fresh paint deserves protecting. Detailing & Paint Protection →