Liezle Barrie, National Sales Manager Consumables at Intamarket Graphics, writes why changing a car’s colour is not as simple as it used to be. Not that long ago, if you wanted to change the colour of your car, the answer was fairly straightforward. You painted it. Then vehicle wrapping came along and gave us another option. Suddenly you could completely transform the appearance of a vehicle without permanently changing the original paintwork.
You could go from black to bright yellow, gloss to matt, add metallics, textures and special effects and, when you eventually got tired of it, remove it and do something completely different.
Now there is another option entering the conversation: coloured Paint Protection Film, or PPF. And this is where I think things start getting really interesting, because the line between colour change and paint protection is becoming increasingly blurred.
So, if you want to change the colour of your vehicle today, what should you actually choose? Paint, colour-change vinyl or coloured PPF?
Unfortunately, the answer is my favourite answer to almost every technical question: it depends.
The first question should not really be about the product at all. It should be about what you are trying to achieve. Do you simply want the car to look different? Are you trying to protect the original paint? Do you want something temporary or permanent? Are stone chips and scratches a concern? Are you trying to preserve the original paintwork and potentially the resale value of the vehicle? Or do you simply want a purple car because you have always wanted a purple car?
Those sound like similar requirements, but technically they are very different, and that is why there is not one material that is automatically the right answer for everyone.
A professional respray obviously still has its place. Paint offers almost unlimited freedom in colour and, when properly prepared and professionally applied, the finish can be exceptional. But it is also a fundamentally different proposition because you are refinishing the vehicle itself. There is surface preparation, primers, base coats, clear coats, curing and finishing involved, and you are making a relatively permanent change to the vehicle. If the existing paint is damaged or the objective is restoration, that may be exactly what is needed. If you have a new vehicle with perfectly good factory paint and simply do not like the colour anymore, permanently changing that original finish may be less appealing.
Vehicle wrapping changed that conversation because it gave us reversibility. A quality colour-change vinyl can completely transform the appearance of a vehicle while leaving the original painted surface underneath intact, provided of course that the original paint is sound and the film is correctly installed and removed.
This is also where the materials science becomes interesting. Most premium vehicle wrap films are cast PVC films designed to be thin, conformable and dimensionally stable. As an example, current premium colour-change wrap films can have face-film thicknesses in roughly the 80 to 140 micron range depending on the colour, texture and construction. That relatively thin, highly conformable construction is intentional. It allows an experienced installer to work the film around compound curves, recesses and complex vehicle geometry while still achieving the smooth, paint-like finish that we expect from a good wrap.
The adhesive underneath that film is another huge part of the technology that customers never see. Modern wrap films may incorporate repositionability, slideability and air-egress channels that allow the installer to position the material and push trapped air out during installation. The film may look like the exciting part, but a great deal of the engineering is actually happening underneath it.
And then, of course, there is choice. Gloss, matt, satin, metallic, pearlescent, colour-shifting, textured and special-effect films have turned vehicle wrapping into an enormous personalisation market. For commercial vehicles, vinyl has another advantage altogether: it can become an advertising medium. Printed graphics, logos, photographs and complete fleet branding are things that colour-change films and PPF do not necessarily need to compete with.
There is, however, a misconception I hear quite often, ‘The vehicle is wrapped, so the paint is protected.’ Well, yes. But also, not quite.
Putting a layer of vinyl over paint will inevitably provide some barrier between the painted surface and the outside world. It can help shield the surface from light abrasion and environmental exposure. But protection against physical impact is not what colour-change vinyl was primarily engineered to do. Its main job is aesthetic transformation.
PPF starts from a completely different engineering objective. Its first job is protection. Modern premium PPF is commonly manufactured from thermoplastic polyurethane, or TPU, rather than the PVC commonly used for vehicle wrapping films. TPU has properties that make it particularly useful where flexibility, toughness and impact resistance are required. PPF constructions are also substantially thicker.
That extra material is not there simply to make PPF thicker. It is part of what allows the film to absorb the everyday punishment that automotive paintwork takes from stone chips, road debris, insect stains, minor scratches and abrasion.
Then there is the topcoat. Many modern premium PPF products use a self-healing topcoat designed so that minor scratches and swirl marks in the film can diminish or disappear when exposed to heat — sometimes even ambient heat, depending on the product. Some newer products also incorporate hydrophobic characteristics to make the surface easier to maintain.
This is an important distinction because self-healing does not mean indestructible. A deep cut through the film is still a deep cut. A sufficiently large stone travelling at speed can still cause damage. PPF does not put an invisible force field around the car. What it does is give the paint a sacrificial protective layer designed specifically to take abuse that would otherwise be directed at the painted surface.
Installation is different too. Traditional vehicle wrap vinyl is normally applied dry, while PPF has historically been installed using a wet application method, allowing the installer to position the film before removing the application solution and setting the adhesive. The materials stretch differently, the adhesives behave differently and the finishing techniques are different. An excellent vinyl wrapper does not automatically become an excellent PPF installer simply because both products arrive on a roll. As with most things in our industry, the skill of the person holding the squeegee matters just as much as the name printed on the box.
But even here, the lines are starting to blur. One of the interesting developments with the new CheetahPCC coloured PPF range is that it uses a dry application method with cold stretching, making the installation process much more familiar to experienced vehicle wrappers than traditional wet-applied PPF. That does not mean the technical requirements disappear, correct installation technique remains critical, and post-heating is still an essential part of the process, but it is another example of how coloured PPF is beginning to bridge the gap between the traditional wrap and PPF worlds.
And then somebody decided PPF did not have to be clear. Historically, the choice was relatively easy to explain. If you wanted to change the colour, you used vinyl. If you wanted to protect the paint while keeping the existing colour, you used clear PPF. Two different products doing two different jobs.
Coloured PPF changes that equation. Suddenly, the protective layer itself can become the colour change. Instead of choosing between aesthetic transformation and protection, you can potentially achieve both with one material.
This is one of the reasons I have found the development of coloured PPF so interesting. We recently introduced the CheetahPCC coloured PPF range into the South African market, and while obviously I am excited about having a new product to sell, what interests me more is what this category represents. The technology is effectively bringing two previously separate parts of the automotive aftermarket closer together.
But does that mean coloured PPF is going to replace traditional colour-change vinyl? I do not think so. For one thing, there is cost. PPF is a more substantial and technically complex material and generally represents a higher initial investment than a conventional colour-change wrap. If the only objective is to turn a white car blue for a couple of years, paying for the additional protective characteristics of PPF may simply not make financial sense for that customer.
Vinyl also has a massive head start when it comes to colour and finish selection. The global colour-change market has had years to develop an extraordinary palette, and although coloured PPF ranges are expanding rapidly, vinyl still offers an enormous creative playground. And if we are talking about commercial branding, digitally printed designs or complex graphics, vinyl remains firmly in its own territory.
On the other hand, consider someone buying a new or high-value vehicle who was already thinking about installing PPF to protect the factory paint. That conversation becomes very different. If they are already prepared to invest in paint protection and they would also like to change the appearance of the vehicle, coloured PPF potentially combines two purchases into one installation.
This is also why I think comparing these options purely on price can be misleading. You can find enormous variations in advertised prices for resprays, vinyl wraps and PPF installations, but you are not simply buying a few square metres of material stuck onto a car. You are buying the material, adhesive technology, surface preparation, installer skill, application environment, finishing, warranty and aftercare. The cheapest quote and the most expensive quote may both say ‘full vehicle wrap’, but that does not mean they are offering remotely the same thing.
With colour-change vinyl, you are primarily paying for transformation. With PPF, you are primarily paying for protection. With coloured PPF, you are paying for a combination of transformation and protection. With paint, you are paying for preparation and permanent refinishing. Once you look at the products in terms of what they are designed to achieve rather than simply what they cost, the comparison starts to make more sense.
There is another important point that applies to both vinyl and PPF: neither of them is magic. The substrate underneath matters enormously. If the vehicle has peeling clear coat, poorly repaired panels, rust, failing aftermarket paint or other surface problems, covering it with an expensive film does not suddenly give you a perfect foundation. In fact, those problems may become particularly relevant when the film eventually has to be removed. A good installer should therefore be willing to have the less exciting conversation about the condition of the vehicle before having the exciting conversation about what colour it is going to become.
Perhaps that is why I think the debate around paint versus vinyl versus PPF sometimes starts with the wrong question. We like asking which technology is ‘better’. Is PPF better than vinyl? Is wrapping better than painting? Will coloured PPF eventually replace colour-change vinyl?
But materials do not really work like that. A product can be technically superior at doing something you do not actually need it to do. The better question is simply: what do I need the end result to do?
If the objective is primarily to transform the appearance of a vehicle, colour-change vinyl may be exactly the right solution. If the priority is protecting the original paint while retaining its existing appearance, clear PPF makes sense. If the customer wants both a significant colour change and meaningful paint protection, coloured PPF creates an entirely new option. And if the vehicle needs permanent refinishing or restoration, paint still very much has its place.
None of these technologies necessarily has to replace the others. They solve different problems, and sometimes they overlap.
For those of us in the graphics industry, I think that is actually the exciting part. We are not losing an old solution every time a new technology arrives. We are simply adding another tool to the toolbox. And in an industry that has spent decades figuring out increasingly clever ways of sticking things to almost every surface imaginable, I suspect we are nowhere near finished yet.
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