Summer Tips for Maintaining Your Car’s Paintwork

You might think winter is the most difficult time to clean and maintain your car’s paintwork, but summer can be a tricky season too. With dust, dirt, dead insects, and tree sap to contend with, keeping your car looking its best certainly has its challenges when the warm weather arrives.

As well as general cleanliness, summer presents other risks to your car’s paintwork – including an increased risk of stone chips (caused by dry road surfaces and more roadworks) and the appearance of light scratches. So, it’s good to know how to quickly repair these problems before they get any worse.

Happily, summer is a much easier time of year to keep tabs on your car’s paintwork. Whether it’s the weekly clean or some routine maintenance and repairs, you’ll be much more inclined to maintain your car’s exterior during the warmer months of the year.

Here, we’ll take you through a few essential tips for cleaning and maintaining your car’s paintwork during the summer.

Quick Links 

• Cleaning and General Maintenance
• Repairs and Painting
• Repairing Light Scratches
• Dealing with Peeling and Flaking Paint
• Fixing Stone Chips
• Prepping and Painting Your Car

Cleaning and General Maintenance

Ideally, you should be washing your car at least once a fortnight throughout the year. In the winter, this might not always be possible, but when the weather’s dry and the days are long, you’ve no excuse but to show your paintwork some care and attention.

Summer can take a surprisingly heavy toll on the look and condition of your car’s paintwork. Dust and dirt from dry roads mean keeping it shiny can be a challenge, while sticky residue from tree sap, dead insects, and bird droppings mean regular washing is essential to make sure these tough deposits are promptly and safely removed before they cause lasting damage.

In the summertime, try to get in the habit of washing your car at least once a week to remove dirt and residue. Even if it’s just a quick wash with a quality car shampoo and pressure washer, this will help keep the paintwork in tip-top condition.

If you don’t have access to a pressure washer or hose, or lack the space required to wash your car, you should make use of local car washes or pay to use a rental pressure washer at a garage. Even in the summer months, keeping your car clean is the best way to avoid scratches, corrosion, and rust, so don’t neglect this essential maintenance task even if the weather is warm and dry.

If you’re looking for car cleaning advice, be sure to check out our partner brand Simoniz. They have tons of helpful guides that can help you take care of your car all year round, as well as specialist cleaning products that make for effortless cleaning and maintenance.

Repairs and Painting

As touched on in our introduction, summer can mean an increased threat of stone chips and scratches on your car’s paintwork. But thankfully, it’s also the best time of year to repair your car’s paintwork before the poor weather of autumn and winter has a chance to make problems worse.

With the Holts Paint Match Pro range, you can repair your car’s paintwork and find the exact colour match for your make and model. With over 8,000 colours from 90 different manufacturers, it’s never been easier to achieve a professional car paintwork repair at home and return your car to its showroom best.

Below, we share our top tips for repairing and maintaining your car during the summer.

Repairing Light Scratches

Light scratches on the paintwork not only look bad but can hurt your car’s resale value and increase the likelihood of corrosion. So, it’s always best to repair scratches as and when they appear.

Repairing scratches on your car’s paintwork isn’t as difficult as it sounds. In fact, most light scratches can simply be polished out of the clear coat; if they’re deeper than that, you’ll need to repair the paintwork and respray it.

Have a scratch on your car that you want to repair? Read our guide on repairing light scratches for essential, step-by-step advice.

Dealing with Peeling and Flaking Paint

Have you noticed that some sections of your car’s paintwork are flaking or peeling? Then it’s important to treat the problem as soon as possible to prevent further paint loss and damage.

Flaking car paint is often caused by exposure to the sun’s UV rays, as well as the effects of a poor paint finish, a chip, scratch, or dent. If it starts happening on your car, you need to treat it quickly as it could mean that the bare metal is exposed, and thus more likely to corrode.

If you’ve spotted an area of flaking or peeling paint, examine and clean the area to determine the extent of the problem. You’ll need to remove all the flaky paint before you start the repair; learn more about how to do that with our guide on treating peeling paintwork.

Fixing Stone Chips

Stone chips are common in summer when roads are dry and there’s an increase in roadworks and surface repairs. And the problem isn’t purely aesthetic; left untreated, and a bad stone chip can cause further problems such as rust and corrosion, which will be much harder to put right.

Fixing stone chips is a similar process to repairing scratches, however, you may need to fill the hole with specialist car body filler before you paint to ensure a smooth, even finish. As with all vehicle repairs, preparation is key here, so we’d recommend following our expert guide on how to fix chips in your car’s paintwork when the primer is exposed.

Prepping and Painting Your Car

Painting a car might sound out of your comfort zone, but thanks to Paint Match Pro, you can achieve professional results with no mess and no fuss. We’ve developed our range of professional car repair paints to be quick and easy to use, so whether you’re a professional or a DIYer, you’ll get the same brilliant results.

Of course, there are a few things to note when it comes to painting your car, and thorough preparation is key to achieving a flawless finish. So, to give you the best chance of achieving professional results at home, we’d recommend our no-nonsense DIY guide to painting metal.

With summer in sight, now is the perfect time to show your car’s paintwork some care and attention. So whether it’s high-performance cleaning or professional car paints you’re looking for, you can make sure your car is shipshape for summer with Holts.