I have a 2013 silver Toyota Venza. The paint is basically fine, but I’d like it to be white, to stay cooler in the sun.
I’ve been told that trying to match the durability of a factory paint job is very difficult and expensive.
Some body shops claim they can paint over old paint, leaving the old factory paint layers in place, but maybe removing the original clear coat first. Is this practical and durable?
One issue is that I have had some body work. Someone rear ended me at about 5 mph, and damaged the rear bumper. The body shop (recommended by my Geico insurance company, which also happened to cover the other driver, who admitted fault) replaced the rear bumper, but also claimed that they needed to replace some panels. Since the other person’s insurance paid for it, I let them, though I wondered if they were cheating Geico. But would I probably need to find out the type of paint they used, and would that affect this? (It looks fine, and it’s been about a year.)
I know there are alternatives that help keep cars cooler - e.g., dashboard shade, magnetic or interior window shades, sunroofs (which I hesitate to use, because I sometimes load heavy sea kayaks onto a roof rack, so I want good structural strength). White seat, dash and steering wheel covers (already used, except for the dash cover). But I think a lot of the problem is the paint itself. I’ve mostly had white cars before, and they were a lot cooler. I made a mistake this time around - I thought light silver would be good enough, but it really isn’t.
A really good paint job to do what you want is going to be expensive and not gain you enough heat resistance to be worth it. I think you are just a little more sensitive to the heat now.
You will just have to have a paint shop give you an estimate .
Edit : Just playing around on Google I found that many articles say that white or Silver vehicles will have better heat resitance that dark colors . So you already have a vehicle that works. One chart showed such a small difference between white and silver to not even be a concern.
I think you’ll be disappointed by the amount of heat reduction you achieve. MUCH cheaper alternative: get your roof area ‘wrapped’ in white, see what you think. But beware of the placebo effect, you’ll want to think it’s working. You’ll need to measure temperatures to know if it actually is, under identical circumstances.
edit - I saw your car is light silver. I’d think that color would be very close to white in reducing car heat. You mention windshield sun blockers - do you use one? That makes a HUGE difference in heat inside my Texas cars.
Near DC, which is a fairly hot area, I would say that silver cars get about 10-15 degrees (F) hotter than white. I say light silver, but Toyota silver was in between the darkness of various silvers. It’s really as much gray as silver. Definitely not a mirror-like finish.
I use a true silver colored windshield sun blocker, but have been unable to find one that covers the whole windshield. The Venza windshield is quite large, and it is very tilted, which of course makes it worse. The outside of the body definitely gets very hot, so just dealing with the windows isn’t enough.
I haven’t yet put shades or blocks on the side and rear windows. I know that is a good idea.
I can’t always park in the shade - and if I park under a tree, sap drips onto the body, attracting bees & wasps, which I had problems with on another car. I don’t have a garage or car port.
If I ever buy another car it will be white. No other color makes any sense. I can’t imagine how some people stand black.
When Mythbusters did a carefully controlled experiment, they found a 10F interior temperature difference between white and black cars parked in the sun.
If you really want white, I’d find a used white Venza. A good paint job is expensive, especially when you’re changing color.
+1
A GOOD quality repaint, just for the purpose of lowering the interior temperature a few degrees, is going to be a really big expenditure on a 9 year old vehicle, and this added expense would not be recouped when selling/trading-in the vehicle.
A good-quality repaint is probably going to cost at least $5k… and maybe more.
Edited to add:
Whoops!
I just noticed that your vehicle is actually 11 years old. This is an even better reason to avoid sinking $5k into it–or more–that you won’t be able to recoup upon selling/trading-in the vehicle.
Try $5000 for a color change. If the paint underneath is sound, it a matter of scuffing the paint. Lots of work for a color change like door and trunk. I had the color changed on my Morris in 1966. Cost me $20 because I did all the work. Never did inside the doors though and times have changed. You’d be up to $1000 just in paint with no labor yet. I think you are way off in the temp measures though. I have a black and gray car and not a big deal.
Your car is already a fairly light color, you aren’t going to see a noticeable difference in painting the car white.
Yes, for a factory comparable paint job, you’d be looking at around the $5k-$7k range.
The quality of a paint job is mostly determined by the prep work. Painting over exiting paint is possible if the surface is scuffed up enough. It’s a common practice in body/paint repair.
Wouldn’t make any difference, cars aren’t painted with lacquer anymore.
I mean you have air conditioning in your car right? Most people just use that to cool the car down.
None of those things you mentioned have any affect whatsoever on the structural integrity of your car. A window shade isn’t load-bearing.
It’s not.
I’d bet if you checked another white 2013 Venza parked in the same condition yours is parked in the interior temperature would be either the same or nearly the same. White paint isn’t going to be much of an advantage over silver. It’s possible that your previous cars might’ve had had less glass area, which would help block out some of the sun.
No AC in your car? In FL the AC quickly cools off the interior of my black car.
BTW, this summer will likely be the hottest since records have been kept. That may be why you think your car color is contributing to the interior temperature.
I never heard of “wrapping” a roof before. I’ll try to figure out whether that will interfere with my roof rack installation - the car doesn’t have “rain gutters”, so I had used Yakima clips that connect to a thin break between rooftop panels. But wrapping looks somewhat simple. What type of professional has experience “wrapping” car roofs? Would most detailers? Would most body shops? And what should they charge?
And I really should try blocking the other windows. Or using a car cover, and cutting holes where the roof racks go.
I’m not competent to do paint the car myself. $5000 is a lot, even though I will probably drive the car into the ground. It’s got about 84500 miles now - well below how long typical Toyotas last.
At one point, I measured a temperature difference between similar cars of different colors in the D.C. area on a hot summer day to be around 15 deg F. But of course that would depend a lot on season, weather, car shape, window tint, etc.
Mythbusters sometimes gets things wrong. E.g., I watched an episode in which they claimed a Samurai sword couldn’t have sliced through a contemporary European sword. But their test was with two cast iron swords, that they made, and did not consider possible differences in materials, metallurgy, sharpening technique, or angles of strike. I don’t know what the right answer would have been, but that was a pretty obvious potential deficiency.
One of the respondents mentioned a Mythbusters test between white and black car temperatures. And even if Mythbusters saw little temperature difference in their test, my own tests gave a different result. What I’m basically saying is that Mythbusters tests tend to be quick and dirty, and don’t take all possible variations into account. E.g., I wouldn’t be surprised if they did their test on a cloudy day, in a climate or season with less direct sun. I trust myself to be more careful. Plus, I’ve had experience with other vehicles, that has led me to understand there is a huge difference.
The holes would be needed so the roof racks could poke through.