Are there any bad ceramic coatings?
Quick answer: From reputable brands, not really. Most ceramic coatings do what they claim -- failures usually come from poor prep, sloppy application, or cheap rebadged "ceramic" sprays sold as the real thing. Pick a proven product and an accredited installer, and the question of a "bad" coating mostly disappears.
It's a fair question, and one we get asked more than you'd think. Someone has read a horror story online -- a coating that streaked, hazed, or peeled within weeks -- and wants to know whether they're about to spend good money on a dud. The honest answer is that genuinely "bad" coatings are rarer than the internet suggests. What's common is the wrong product applied the wrong way, or a retail bottle of wax wearing a borrowed name. Untangling those three things is most of what this article is about.
What "bad" usually turns out to mean
When a customer arrives convinced their coating was faulty, the problem is almost never the chemistry in the bottle. Far more often it's the preparation underneath it. A ceramic coating bonds to the surface it's laid on; if that surface still carries bonded contamination, swirl marks, or leftover polishing oils, the coating locks all of that in and the finish looks worse, not better. The product did exactly what it was designed to do -- it just did it on top of a poorly prepped panel.
Application conditions account for most of the rest. Coatings are sensitive to temperature and humidity while they cure, and they have a working window measured in minutes. Wipe off the high spots too late and you get streaks and rainbow-ish flares in raking light; rush a panel in a cold, damp unit and the cure stalls. None of that is the coating being "bad". It's the coating being unforgiving, which is a different thing -- and precisely why the better brands restrict who is allowed to apply them.
The rebadged-wax problem
Here is where the word "bad" earns its keep. Since coatings became fashionable, plenty of car-care manufacturers have added a splash of ceramic to their sealants and relabelled the result a "ceramic coating" to ride the trend. A retail product with some SiO2 content in it may well be a perfectly good wax with strong hydrophobic behaviour -- water beads beautifully, the bottle does what the bottle says -- but it is not a professional ceramic coating in any meaningful sense.
The giveaway is longevity. A true professional coating is measured in years; these retail ceramics are not permanent and typically last six months to a year before they need redoing. That's not a scam if the label is honest about it, and many are. The trouble starts when the marketing implies durability the chemistry can't deliver -- the customer expects a multi-year coating and gets a seasonal wax, then reasonably concludes the product was "bad" when really it was mis-sold.
What we've seen on the bench
We've tested products over the years that we weren't happy with, and it's worth being precise about what that means. Some are formulated specifically for supply to dealerships, where the person applying it may not be a trained detailer. Those products are deliberately easy to use -- forgiving working windows, simpler wipe-off -- and that ease comes at a cost we could measure against what we already run in the workshop. Tom, our operations manager, put a couple of them through the same prep-and-cure routine we use day to day and came away unconvinced they'd hold up the way we'd want to put our name to. That doesn't make them "bad"; it means they didn't meet the standard we expect before we'll offer something as a service.
We've also had a sales rep, in plain terms, admit that his range was designed to give the impression of being ceramic coatings rather than to actually be one. We didn't buy them. That conversation has stuck with us because it sums up the grey area neatly: the product wasn't defective, it was just dressed up as something it wasn't.
Why the good brands lock the door
Notice a pattern in all of the above: the failures cluster around prep, application, and mislabelling -- not the coating itself. That's exactly why reputable manufacturers control who can sell their product as a service. They vet the agent, run a training course, and issue certification before letting anyone apply the coating under their name. It isn't snobbery; it's the only way to protect the brand from being judged on a botched application that was never the chemistry's fault.
It also tells you something useful as a buyer. If a "professional" coating is freely available in a kit to anyone with a credit card, the manufacturer has chosen not to guard their reputation that way -- which should make you ask why. Buy genuine product from authorised outlets of brands that take their accredited-agent network seriously, have it applied by an accredited installer, and most of the "bad coating" risk evaporates before you've started.
Counterfeits and the online minefield
There is one category that genuinely deserves the label "bad", and it's the counterfeit. Coatings are a high-value item -- professionals pay anywhere from £50 to £350 for a 50ml bottle -- which makes them an obvious target for fakers and online scammers. We've been made aware of counterfeit product turning up on marketplaces like eBay: a famous label on a bottle filled with who-knows-what. That is the one place where you can do everything else right -- good prep, careful application -- and still end up with a finish that fails, because what's in the bottle isn't what the bottle claims.
The defence is simple and worth repeating: a coating kit at a too-good-to-be-true price from an unfamiliar online seller is a red flag, not a bargain. Stick to authorised channels and the counterfeit problem doesn't reach you.
So -- are there any bad ceramic coatings?
Pulling the threads together: from established, reputable brands, very few coatings are genuinely bad. Most do exactly what they claim. The reputation for "bad" coatings is built almost entirely on three avoidable things -- preparation skipped, application rushed or done in the wrong conditions, and retail waxes or outright counterfeits sold as the real thing. Choose a proven product, buy it through proper channels, and have it applied by someone the manufacturer trusts to apply it. Do that, and the bad coating is a problem you've already designed out.