Ceramic Coating in Burlingame — Installed at Your Driveway

Two miles south of an international airport, under a canopy of eucalyptus and elm — this town is genuinely hard on clear coat. Here's what your paint is up against between washes:

• Tree sap: eucalyptus and elm along El Camino Real and the Easton Addition streets drip sap that bonds to bare clear coat within days
• Jet fallout: SFO sits two miles north, and the fine, oily residue from constant air traffic settles on hoods and roofs and traps grime
• Salt air: bay moisture carries salt that accelerates oxidation on every horizontal panel
• Street parking: a run to the Burlingame Ave shopping district usually means parking under the same trees doing the damage
• The stakes: this is BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche country from downtown to the Hillsborough border — dark German paint shows every swirl and etch mark

Wax is a sacrificial layer measured in weeks. Burlingame's problems are measured in years. Oily jet fallout and sap sit right through a wax layer, and once the wax is gone, everything bonds straight to your clear coat. A ceramic coating is different — it cures into a hard, chemically resistant layer that lasts 2–3 years at minimum and 6 years on our Pro+ tier. Sap lands on the coating instead of gripping the paint, so it comes off with a normal wash. Fallout doesn't embed. Water sheets off and carries salt with it instead of letting it dry in place. If you keep a nice car under Burlingame trees, coating once beats waxing forever.

Every tier includes a 1-step paint correction before we coat. That machine-polishing pass removes 70–85% of existing swirls, so we're sealing in corrected paint — not locking in defects. If your paint needs more than that, we'll say so up front: a 2-step correction runs $799 and removes 85–95%.

You don't drop your car anywhere. We come to your Burlingame home with water, power, and professional lighting, and the car stays in your driveway or garage the whole day. Here's the sequence:

• Foam wash, iron remover, and clay bar strip off sap residue, fallout, and embedded contamination
• 1-step machine correction — included in every tier — polishes out swirls and sap shadows
• Alcohol wipe-down removes polishing oils so the coating bonds directly to clean clear coat
• Coating goes on panel by panel, leveled and checked under our lights for high spots
• We register the coating with the manufacturer — System X registrations show on your CARFAX — and walk you through the aftercare rules for the cure period

Plenty of Burlingame customers start with a full detail to see how we work before committing to a coating. A full detail runs from $399, interior-only from $249, and an exterior detail with sap treatment from $149 — all mobile, all at your driveway. If sap has been sitting a while, a standalone 1-step paint correction from $399 clears the shadows out. See our Burlingame mobile detailing page for the full menu, or text us and we'll tell you honestly which service your car actually needs.