Block out the right amount of time
The most common question we get after price is “how long will you be here?”, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you booked, what you drive, and what the car has been through. Here are the real numbers we plan around, what pushes them out, and how to set things up so the job runs to time.
The quick take
A maintenance detail is one and a half to two hours. A mid-level detail with a sealant and deeper interior work is two to three. A full detail with clay bar and extraction is three to four. Paint correction is a half day to a full day, and a ceramic coating adds a twelve-hour cure on top of that. Bigger vehicles, pet hair, sap, and long gaps between cleans all add time. And anything advertised as a thirty-minute detail is a wash with a different name on it.
Realistic times for each job
Planned around a mid-size car in ordinary condition. Your car may be faster or slower, and we will say which at booking.
Essential: 1.5 to 2 hours
A thorough exterior hand wash with wheels and tyres, plus an interior vacuum, wipe-down, and glass. On a sedan in ordinary condition this is around ninety minutes. A large SUV or a car that has not been cleaned in a while pushes it toward two. This is the maintenance detail, and it is the one most people should be booking most often. $140.
Signature: 2 to 3 hours
Everything in Essential, with deeper interior work on the seats, carpet, and trim, and a sealant on the paint so the wash lasts. The interior is where the extra hour goes: shampooing cloth or conditioning leather is slow work that cannot be rushed without leaving it half done. $200.
Elite: 3 to 4 hours
The full reset. Exterior decontamination with a clay bar before protection goes on, hot water extraction of seats and carpet, every interior surface dressed, and door jambs and engine bay included. Four hours is honest for a mid-size car in average condition. A heavily used family SUV can go past it. $280.
Paint correction: a half day to a full day
Machine polishing to remove swirls, oxidation, and light scratches is measured in panels, not hours. A single-stage enhancement polish on a small car might be four to five hours. A multi-stage correction on a dark SUV with years of car-wash scratching is a full day and sometimes runs into a second. It is quoted after we see the paint, never before.
Ceramic coating: correction day plus a cure window
The coating itself goes on in an hour or two, but it can only go onto corrected, decontaminated paint, so the day starts with that. After application the car needs roughly twelve hours undisturbed: no water, no dew if possible, nothing touching the paint. A shaded spot or a garage overnight is ideal. That cure window is part of the job even though we are not there for it.
Add-ons: 30 minutes to 3 hours
Headlight restoration is about an hour per pair. Heavy pet hair runs from thirty minutes on a light coating to two or three hours when it is packed into seams. Heavy sap or tar removal adds thirty to sixty minutes. Each of these is quoted before we start so the finish time is not a surprise.
What adds time, and how much
Vehicle size. A three-row SUV or a crew-cab truck has roughly half again the surface area of a compact sedan, inside and out. More glass, more carpet, a third row that has usually been used as a storage shelf. Budget an extra thirty to sixty minutes over the ranges above for anything large, and expect us to say so when you tell us the model.
Pet hair. This is the single biggest variable inside the car. Hair that is lightly scattered comes out in the normal vacuum. Hair that has been sat into cloth seats and carpet over months has to be physically agitated loose with rubber tools and compressed air before it can be vacuumed, and on a heavily used dog car that is two to three hours by itself. It is priced and quoted as its own item before we start, because it genuinely is its own job.
Sap, tar, and bonded contamination. Fresh sap wipes off. Sap that has baked through a summer needs solvent and patience, spot by spot. A clay-bar pass over the whole car, which is what removes the rough, bonded film a normal wash leaves behind, adds around forty-five minutes to an hour and is included in the Elite detail and in any job where protection is going on afterwards.
Paint correction. Worth its own line because it works on a different scale. A detail cleans a car; a paint correction removes a thin layer of clear coat under a machine, one section at a time, checking under a light after every pass. A single-stage enhancement on a small car is a half day. A multi-stage correction on a dark car with years of swirls is a full day, and sometimes spills into a second. We look at the paint before quoting time, and we will tell you if a lighter polish gets you most of the way there.
Ceramic coating cure. The application is not slow, but the coating needs about twelve hours undisturbed afterward: no water, no wiping, ideally no heavy dew. If we coat in the afternoon the car should sit somewhere covered overnight. That is not us being precious; a coating that gets wet before it cures can haze, and fixing that means polishing it off and starting again.
Headlights. Headlight restoration is around an hour for the pair as an add-on: sanding the yellowed layer off, polishing the lens clear, and sealing it so it does not come back in six months. It fits neatly alongside any detail because it can be done while the interior is drying.
What we need on site
Less than people expect. We do not need your water or your power; everything comes in the van. What we do need is room. Every door has to open fully, the boot has to open, and there has to be space to walk around the car with a vacuum and a polisher. A driveway is ideal. A single garage where the car is wedged between a wall and a workbench is not, and it is better to pull the car out onto the drive or the street if that is allowed.
Shade matters for some jobs and not others. A wash and interior can be done in sun. Paint correction and coating cannot be done well on hot paint, so for those we want a shaded or covered spot, or an early start. If the only option is full sun, tell us and we will schedule for morning.
Workplaces and apartments both work fine. An office car park during the day is one of the most efficient ways to have the car done because you are not waiting around for it; we do a lot of jobs in Sunnyvale and around the South Bay campuses on exactly that basis. For apartment and condo lots the main question is whether the property permits it and where the water runoff goes; our apartments and HOA guide covers what to check and how we handle the ones that do not allow washing on site. Older buildings in Oakland with street-only parking are workable too, provided we can get a legal space next to the car for the van.
How to prepare so it runs to time
Take your belongings out. Not just the obvious things on the seats: the door pockets, the centre console, the glovebox if you want it wiped inside, and the boot. We will move things if we have to, but every item we move and put back is time not spent on the car, and there is always a small worry about where something belongs.
Child seats are the big one. The seat under a car seat is always the dirtiest surface in the car, and it cannot be cleaned properly with the seat in place. If you want that area done, take the seats out before we arrive and put them back yourself afterward; we would rather not be responsible for reinstalling something safety-critical, and it saves twenty minutes each way.
Tell us in advance about anything unusual: a dog, a spill, sap from a week under a tree, a smoker's car, a headlight you want doing. It lets us bring the right tools, allocate the right time slot, and quote the add-on before the day so nothing is a surprise. And have the keys ready at the start time. We book Mon–Sat, 8am–6pm, and a job that starts late runs late into the next one.
About those “30-minute details”
You will see them advertised. Thirty minutes is enough to wash the outside, vacuum the floor, and wipe the dash. That is a wash, and there is nothing wrong with a wash, but calling it a detail sets the wrong expectation. Nobody can shampoo seats, clay a car, clean door jambs, condition leather, and do the glass properly in half an hour. If the time is that short, something on the list is not being done, and it is usually the part you cannot see from the driveway.
The useful way to think about it is that time is roughly proportional to thoroughness. If you want to know what you are paying for at each level, our pricing guide lays it out, and if you are deciding how often to book, the frequency guide is the companion to this one. A shorter maintenance detail every couple of months usually beats a heroic four-hour reset once a year, both for the car and for your calendar.
Want a time estimate for your car?
Tell us the model, which package you're thinking of, and anything unusual about the car. We'll give you a realistic window and a fixed quote before the day, so you can plan the rest of it around us.
Get a time and price