Direct to consumer
Broad-line American consumer detailing brand with a large direct-to-consumer catalogue, strong retail presence, and unusually complete published safety and ingredient documentation.
Ceramic coating brands
Who makes what, who owns them, how you can actually buy it, and — the part nobody else tracks — whether the company publishes anything at all that would let you check its own durability claim.
20 brands tracked. 18 audited so far; the rest are honest gaps in our research rather than findings about those companies.
Illustration
What this page ranks, and what it does not
It does not rank performance. We make a coating ourselves, and a performance league table published by one of the entrants is worth exactly what you would expect. What it does record is checkable: whether a company hosts its own safety data sheet, whether it publishes an ingredient breakdown, whether any test method exists behind the number on the bottle, and where its own published figures contradict each other.
Of the 18 brands we have audited, 6 host their own safety data sheet and 4 publish any test data or method behind a durability claim. 12 brands publish figures that disagree with their own other figures. Our own brand is in the table, sorted alphabetically like everyone else, and it fails two of these criteria.
| Brand | How you buy it | Safety data sheet | Test data | Conflicting figures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct to consumer | Hosted by maker | No | 2 specifications | |
| Direct to consumer | Not assessed | Not assessed | 1 specification | |
Ca | Installers and consumers | Not found | No | 1 specification |
| Certified installers only | Not found | Yes | 2 specifications | |
| Installers and consumers | Not found | No | 1 specification | |
Fe | Installers and consumers | Not found | No | 1 specification |
| Direct to consumer | Not found | No | — | |
Gt | Installers and consumers | Not found | No | 1 specification |
Gy | Installers and consumers | Hosted by maker | No | — |
| Installers and consumers | Reseller copy only | No | — | |
| Direct to consumer | Hosted by maker | No | — | |
Mo | Certified installers only | Not found | No | 1 specification |
Mo | Direct to consumer | Reseller copy only | Yes | — |
| Direct to consumer | Hosted by maker | No | 2 specifications | |
| Installers and consumers | Hosted by maker | No | 1 specification | |
| Enthusiast / prosumer | Not assessed | Not assessed | — | |
| Direct to consumer | Not found | No | 1 specification | |
 ShineMDours | Direct to consumer | Not found | Yes | — |
| Installers and consumers | Hosted by maker | Yes | 3 specifications | |
| Direct to consumer | Reseller copy only | No | — |
Three patterns the audit turned up
The brands with the most to lose make the weakest claims
Meguiar’s, which 3M owns, publishes no durability figure for its flagship spray at all. Neither do Griot’s Garage, Mothers or P&S. The twelve-month claims cluster among smaller, less documented sellers, and the one brand that quantifies conservatively — Gyeon, at “greater than six weeks” — states a floor rather than a ceiling. If you read nothing else here, read that correlation before trusting a number on a label.
Three brands claim hardness above the top of the scale
The pencil hardness test ends at 9H because that is the hardest pencil in the set. Two brands cite a test standard, state the scale’s limits correctly, and then report a result above it. Three more claim 9H or 10H with no standard at all. Four publish no hardness figure whatsoever — including the one whose flagship coating is named after a hardness scale.
What 9H actually means, brand by brand →Review sites have invented claims these brands never made
Three durability figures widely attributed to manufacturers do not appear on those manufacturers’ pages: “up to 1 year” for Mothers CMX, “up to 6 months” for Griot’s Ceramic 3-in-1, and two months for P&S Bead Maker — the last sourced only to a competing coating brand’s blog. We read the manufacturer pages in each case and the phrases are not there. This is what happens when a figure gets repeated until it looks like a specification.
Every brand we track
Direct to consumer
Mass-retail car care brand owned by Energizer Holdings, whose ceramic paint spray is sold internationally but does not appear in its United States range.
founded 2009
Coating maker behind the CQuartz line, with a consumer-grade coating alongside an installer-exclusive flagship, and a stated house policy of under-promising on durability.
founded 2010
Installer-network coating brand with a tiered warranty programme, and one of only two companies here that names a third-party lab and specific test standards for its performance claims.
Installers and consumers
High-volume enthusiast brand with an enormous catalogue and heavy marketing presence, selling SiO2 gels and sprays alongside a full detailing range direct and through retail.
Elk Grove Village, Illinois, USA
American coating maker known for self-healing chemistry, selling installer-applied coatings on registered warranties alongside consumer products, and unusually explicit about the limits of what it will cover.
Tacoma, Washington, USA · founded 1990
Founder-led American detailing company that formulates and bottles in-house, selling polishes, coatings and its own polisher range direct to enthusiasts.
Installers and consumers
British-founded coating brand whose accredited-detailer flagship carries a nine-year guarantee, sold alongside consumer coatings applied without accreditation.
South Korea
Korean coating manufacturer selling an installer network and consumer bottles from the same catalogue, and the only brand here that publishes durability as a technical specification with a floor rather than a ceiling.
Installers and consumers
Coating manufacturer positioning itself on low and zero VOC high-solids chemistry, sold through a professional tier and to consumers, with its United States distribution handled by a named entity in Alabama.
Irvine, California, USA · founded 1901
Century-old American car care brand, family-run until 3M acquired it in 2008, now part of 3M’s automotive aftermarket division and sold through general retail.
Takamatsu, Japan · founded 2005
Boutique Japanese manufacturer of glass and titanium coatings applied only by authorised installers, and one of the oldest companies still trading in automotive coatings.
Huntington Beach, California, USA
Independent Californian car care company sold through mass retail, whose CMX line pairs silicon dioxide with titanium dioxide and is unusually candid about what its own durability testing has and has not established.
Direct to consumer
Direct-response consumer brand built around a single silica spray coating, sold mainly through its own site and Amazon with heavy emphasis on ease of application.
Installers and consumers
Long-established coating brand from the makers of Optimum No Rinse, selling installer-applied coatings on a tiered warranty alongside consumer products from the same chemistry house.
Enthusiast / prosumer
Professional-channel detailing chemistry sold in pints through gallons, whose popular Bead Maker protectant is a polymer spray sealant rather than a silica coating despite being shopped against them.
Direct to consumer
Direct-response consumer brand built around one silica spray sold in bottle-count bundles, marketed on speed and convenience with no volume stated on its own product page.
ours
Direct to consumer
Graphene-infused silica spray coating sold direct to consumers, positioned between demanding professional solvent coatings and short-lived consumer sprays.
Plainville, Connecticut, USA · founded 2010
Connecticut coating manufacturer selling installer-applied coatings on tiered warranties, with a consumer-reachable maintenance spray, Renew, sitting underneath them.
Direct to consumer
The mass-retail incumbent in American car care, now selling ceramic and graphene sprays under its Hybrid Solutions line alongside a separate professional car-wash chemical business.