Skill and the right exterior detailing equipment aren’t enough for ensuring a job well done, particularly when it comes to both appearance and finish. Whether it’s car paint or coating, to ensure you have gloss of quality that’s according to the standards, with the needed consistent and uniform results throughout all of the car, you have to include a gloss meter in your tool arsenal.
Gloss, haze & DOI meters test the reflection or gloss level of your car's paintwork, measuring the amount of light reflected in gloss units (GU). With their advanced sensors and processors, much like in car industry quality control, they also provide valuable pieces of data for a professional detailer. Among our range, you can find gloss meters of different designs, from simpler and more affordable to multi-angle and advanced with various features like connectivity and data transfer.
The gloss meter for paint is different from a paint depth gauge which will measure the thickness of lacquer, paint, and primer. These let you know how much "paint" there is to machine polish; whereas a gloss meter shows you how well you have polished it and the overall levels of gloss achieved. With the ability to show the changes in orange peel, distinctness of image (DOI), haze, texture, shade, and opacity on your own or customer's cars, these meters will really set an advance detailing studio apart from the rest.
Orange peel is the "ripple" found in car paintwork which hasn't been perfectly flattened between each layer of primer, paint or lacquer applied to the surface. It is described as orange peel due to the similar look to an orange fruit skin. Orange peel can be removed via wet sanding if it is not too aggressive or caused by poor base layers. The result is a purer reflection, less scattered light, and overall a more impressive paintwork finish.