Car wrapping is an excellent modern technique offering drivers and car owners almost limitless possibilities for the personalisation of a vehicle. Even if you do not feel a need to create an exclusive design for your car just because you want it to really look cool, the method of wrapping is still of a great use for people who have to change the appearance of their cars because they want to us their transport for advertising.
Although wrapping your car into vinyl decals won’t give you a timeless effect, this is also a great feature of this technique since you can easily get rid of the wrapping whenever there is such a need. For instance, this is a great opportunity for personalisation of the cars that are leased.
Are you already interested in using wrapping for your car? Then, you will find a lot of interesting information on the topic in this article.
What is the exact process of car wrapping?
There are several important steps of car wrapping which are described below.
Choosing or creating the design
Certainly, before the process of car wrapping starts, you should decide which design you would like to apply to your vehicle. Needless to say, the more sophisticated the design is, the longer the process of wrapping will take and the possibilities for creating appearance for your car with wrapping are really immense. That is so since the technique allows you to use vinyl decals of absolutely various effects and colours and also create different designs with the help of digital tools. Thus, you can put almost any crazy idea into life with wrapping.
As you have just understood, the first stage of the process is creating the design for your car. For some types of images, several types of vinyl decals might be needed and they will be applied to your car in several layers.
Car washing
The next stage of the wrapping process comes when the design is ready. Now, your car should be prepared for wrapping. In order to make your car suitable for wrapping, the car service will have to clean your vehicle very thoroughly. This is needed for making the surface of the car as smooth as possible since only in such a way the vinyl decals will be adhered to the car appropriately. In order to prepare the surface of your car for wrapping in such a way, a power washing procedure might be required as well. The entire process of preparation of your car for wrapping can take a couple of days.
Vinyl decals appliance
There are two ways of applying vinyl decals on your car. The first one which is regarded to be less thorough will apply the decals to your car directly without removing any elements of the vehicle. The second one includes the stage of removing such elements taillights, headlights and bumper covers. Removing these parts allows to adjust the vinyl decals precisely to the edges and fit the material to the crevasses of the vehicle better.
Of course, applying vinyl decals with removing the parts of a car will cost you more but it is definitely worth it since this will create a better effect.
A popular way of fixing the material on the surface of the car is with the use if a heat gun. As it has already been mentioned, some types of wrapping design may require applying several layers of materials.
When the decals are applied, the specialists should check their work for any, even the smallest imperfections as they can lead to damages of wrapping. For example, if there are any bubbles, the have to be smoothed out.
The requirements for vehicle
Although many people use wrapping instead of repainting their old cars, you should be aware of the fact it doesn’t mean you can wrap a car with a particularly damaged surface. Actually, the condition of the surface should be really good, otherwise, wrapping will not have any sense.
That is so since any damages of the car surface such as dings, dents and scratches will still be visible after wrapping your car. This is exactly the same as with painting a car with a damaged surface.
Furthermore, if there is any corrosion on your car or spots with chipped paint, this can worsen the adhesion of vinyl decals, thus, shortening the lifespan of a vinyl layer substantially. Actually, wrapping such a car might not be a good idea and many companies will even resign from wrapping such a car or will not provide you with any guarantee or warranty for their work.
How to take care of wrapped vehicle?
No matter how cool wrapped cars might look, this effect is not particularly long-lasting, even if you have wrapped a totally new car in its ideal condition. Generally, vinyl wrapping will last for no more than five years, however many external factors, especially such as drastic temperatures and ultraviolet radiation will be rather detrimental for the material. Thus, vinyl decals don’t like either rather low temperatures or baking sun.
Although taking the wrapping layer off is a simple and not particularly expensive procedure, the longer vinyl is on your car, the more difficult it becomes.