Ask five detailers what a detail costs and you will get five different answers, because "detailing" covers everything from a careful wash to three days of machine work. The price is not arbitrary — it tracks almost exactly with how many hours the car needs and how much of that time is skilled. Here is the honest version.
The three price bands
Nearly every quote you will be given in Melbourne falls into one of three bands.
Maintenance, roughly $60–$150
A wash, wheels, glass, a vacuum and a dressing. No correction, no decontamination beyond the basics. This is what a car in good condition needs every few weeks to stay that way, and it is the wrong thing to buy if your paint is already dull — you will get a very clean dull car.
Packages, roughly $180–$400
This is where most bookings sit. A proper interior or exterior package, or both together. Decontamination, hot water extraction on carpets, jambs, sills, vents — the things a maintenance wash skips because they take time. Our own Exterior and Interior Packages are $199 each and a Full Detail is $369, which is representative of the Melbourne market for a sedan in reasonable condition.
Correction and coating, $700 and up
Machine polishing to remove defects from the clear coat, and optionally a ceramic coating over the top. The range here is enormous because the work is measured in hours at the polisher and the number of hours depends entirely on the paint. A single-stage enhancement on soft, well-kept paint is a different job from a three-stage correction on a neglected black car.
The useful distinction: cleaning removes what is sitting on the paint. Correction removes a layer of the paint itself to level out what has been scratched into it. The first is reversible and cheap. The second is finite — there is only so much clear coat — and that is what you are paying a premium for.
Why the same car gets different quotes
Four things move the number more than anything else.
- Size. A seven-seat SUV is not a sedan with a bigger boot. It is another row of carpet, more glass, more panels and another hour or two. Most Melbourne detailers add 20–30% for large SUVs, utes and vans, and we are no exception.
- Condition. The gap between a car washed fortnightly and one that has not been touched in two years is measured in hours, not products.
- Colour and paint hardness. Black and dark solids show every defect and take longer to finish. Soft paint marries easily and hard paint resists correction — both cost time, for opposite reasons.
- Whether anyone actually inspected it. A quote given over the phone from a description is a guess. A quote given after looking at the car under proper lighting is a price.
What makes a car cheaper to detail
Frequency, mostly. The cost of detailing is dominated by undoing accumulated damage, and almost all of that damage is avoidable. A car that gets a proper wash regularly never needs correction, because the swirls never get put in. A car washed with one bucket and a sponge every Sunday for five years needs a full correction, and the correction costs more than a decade of maintenance would have.
That is the entire logic behind a Membership — twelve Full Details a year, prepaid, which comes in a long way under booking the same twelve individually. It is not a loyalty scheme; it is just cheaper to keep a car right than to fix it.
What to ask before you book
- Is this quote after seeing the car, or before?
- Does the price change if the job takes longer than expected?
- What specifically is included — and what is an add-on?
- If it is a correction, how many stages, and what is the expected defect removal?
- If it is mobile, what do you need from me? (For us: somewhere to park, a tap and a powerpoint.)
Any detailer worth booking will answer all five without hedging. If the answer to the first is "before", treat the number as an estimate and expect it to move.