How Much to Charge for Auto Detailing: Size Class and Hours

Short answer: How much to charge for auto detailing is bay hours multiplied by your own loaded hourly cost, not a menu copied off another shop. Set size classes (compact 1.0, sedan 1.1, crossover 1.25, three-row 1.5, full-size pickup 1.6), assign base hours to every package, multiply, add per-vehicle consumables, add overhead, then divide by one minus your margin. Pet hair, smoke, and sand are conditional lines confirmed at drop-off, never absorbed.

Detailing prices badly for a specific reason: the product being sold is invisible and the cost driver is the clock. A customer sees a clean car; you spent nineteen hours in a bay you pay rent on. This page builds the number from the bay hour up, using a two-step correction and coating as the worked example, and then shows where the money actually leaks — condition surcharges nobody wrote down and cure time nobody charged for. The document you hand over before the keys change hands is covered in auto detailing estimate template.

What am I actually selling — a package or an hour?

An hour, described as a package. The package name is how the customer shops; the hours are what you spend. Every price on your menu should be a base hour figure with a size multiplier applied to it, and nothing else.

Package	Base hours, Class 1	What is in it
Maintenance wash	1.0	Two-bucket or foam wash, dry, wheels and tires, quick interior wipe and vacuum
Interior deep	3.5	Full extraction, headliner, vents, jambs, leather clean and condition, glass
Full detail	5.0	Interior deep plus exterior decon, clay, sealant, trim dress
One-step enhancement polish	5.0	Wash, decon, clay, single-stage machine polish, sealant
Two-step paint correction	11.0	Compound stage plus refine stage, taped, inspected under lights
Ceramic coating over corrected paint	+3.0	Panel wipe, application, leveling, inspection, cure window

Publish the hours next to the price on your own internal sheet even if the customer never sees them. The moment a package has no hour figure attached, it stops being priced and starts being guessed.

How do I set the size classes?

Not by curb weight and not by sticker price. Detailing time scales with surface area, seat count, and how many things have to be worked by hand.

Class	Examples	Multiplier	What actually drives it
1	Coupes, compacts, two-seat convertibles	1.00	Two doors, one row, short panels
2	Sedans, small wagons	1.10	Four jambs, two rows, more glass
3	Crossovers, midsize SUVs	1.25	Roof height, cargo carpet, taller panels
4	Three-row SUVs, minivans	1.50	Third row, seven or eight seats, sliding-door tracks
5	Full-size pickups, cargo vans, dually	1.60	Ladder work, bed and liner, large flat panels that show every defect

Wheels are the exception that breaks the multiplier and should be their own line. A set of open-mesh or multi-spoke wheels cleaned face and barrel is 40 to 60 minutes on its own regardless of what the vehicle is, and a lifted truck with mud in the arches is another matter entirely. Price wheels and arches separately or you will keep losing an hour on trucks and never know where it went.

What does one bay hour cost me?

Total the three layers, then treat the sum as what it costs for a car to be occupying your space with somebody working on it.

Layer	Example calculation	Per bay hour
Detailer wage plus burden	$24.00 × 1.28 for payroll taxes, comp, and liability	$30.72
Bay	Rent, power, water, heat, polishers, extractor, steamer, compressor, lighting, insurance — $38,400 a year ÷ 1,500 productive bay hours	$25.60
Operating cost		$56.32
Overhead	$27,000 a year — booking software, marketing, licensing, phone, training, uninvoiced admin — ÷ 1,500 bay hours	$18.00
Fully loaded cost		$74.32

Productive bay hours is the line most shops get wrong. It is hours a vehicle was in the bay being worked on, not hours the door was unlocked. Subtract no-shows, waiting on a customer to arrive, the hour spent cleaning up after the last job, and the days the coating was curing and nothing else could come in.

What do the consumables actually cost per vehicle?

Small on a wash, meaningful on a coating, and always specific to the job rather than a percentage of price.

Item	On a two-step plus coating	Cost
Coating, 30 ml bottle	One bottle, one vehicle, opened and used	$95.00
Compound and finishing polish	Roughly 4 oz of each	$22.00
Pads — four cutting, three finishing, retired after this job	7	$48.00
Microfiber — applicators, leveling towels, retired after coating	12	$18.00
Iron remover, clay lube, degreaser, wheel cleaner, panel wipe	Job quantity	$34.00
Per-vehicle consumables		$217.00

Pads and towels are the two lines detailers underbudget. A pad used on compound is not going back into the finishing rotation, and a towel used to level a coating is finished. Count them as consumed on the job that consumed them, the same way a painter counts a roller sleeve. Those supply invoices are also ordinary business expenses, which is what self-employed tax deductions is about — and the IRS expects a supporting document showing payee, amount, date, and what was bought, per its guidance on what kind of records should I keep. The receipt has to exist for the deduction to.

What does the math look like on a two-step plus coating?

Class 3 crossover, single-stage repaint on one door from a prior repair, moderate swirling throughout, customer wants a coating.

Base hours, Class 1: wash and chemical decon 1.5, wheels and arches 1.0, tape and inspect with a test spot 0.75, compound stage 4.5, refine stage 3.25, panel wipe 0.75, coating application and leveling 2.0, glass, trim, jambs and final inspection 1.25. Total 15.0 base hours × 1.25 = 18.75 bay hours.

Step	Calculation	Amount
Operating cost	18.75 × $56.32	$1,056.00
Overhead	18.75 × $18.00	$337.50
Consumables	From the table above	$217.00
Total cost		$1,610.50
Price at 35% margin	$1,610.50 ÷ 0.65	$2,477.69
Quoted	Rounded	$2,475.00

Nothing in that number came from a competitor’s website. It came from 18.75 hours a bay could not be used for anything else, and the bottle of coating that is now empty.

Markup or margin — where does it bite in detailing?

Margin is the share of the price you keep. Markup is a percentage added to cost. On this job, applying a 35 percent markup to $1,610.50 gives $2,174.18 — a 25.9 percent margin, $303.51 below the correct price. That is more than the coating cost you.

To hit a target margin, divide cost by one minus the margin: 30 percent means dividing by 0.70, 35 percent by 0.65, 40 percent by 0.60. Do the same arithmetic on the maintenance wash and something uncomfortable appears. A Class 3 wash at 1.25 bay hours costs $92.90 fully loaded before a drop of soap. Priced at 30 percent margin with consumables, it lands well above what most markets pay for a wash. That is not a flaw in the math; it is the reason maintenance washes work as a retention product for coating clients and rarely work as a standalone bay product at full overhead.

Which conditions double the hours, and how do I write them?

Every one of these has to appear on the quote as a conditional line with its own price, confirmed when you open the door at drop-off. Absorbing them is how a five-hour interior becomes a nine-hour interior for the same money.

Condition	What it adds	How to write the line
Heavy pet hair	1.5 to 3.0 hours of rubber brush, pumice, and repeat extraction; often a second pass after it dries	”Pet hair removal — first hour included, additional hours billed at the posted rate, confirmed at drop-off”
Smoke odor	Headliner, all vents, cabin filter, full extraction, then ozone or enzyme over multiple sessions	Separate staged line with a written no-guarantee clause on permanent removal
Mold or mildew	PPE, antimicrobial treatment, and a water intrusion that has to be found and fixed first	Its own job, or declined — do not fold it into an interior detail
Beach sand	Doubles interior time: extract, compressed air, extract again, and it keeps appearing	Conditional hourly line
Overspray, tar, tree sap, rail dust	Chemical, clay, sometimes correction on the affected panels	Per panel, quoted after inspection
Biohazard or bodily fluids	Not a detailing job	Decline and refer

Photograph the condition at drop-off with the customer standing there, and text the revised figure before you start. Almost every dispute in this trade is a number the customer saw for the first time at pickup.

What does mobile work add that a shop bay does not?

A mobile job carries every cost a bay job carries plus a set of site risks that only show up on arrival. Price these as named lines, not as a vague travel fee.

• Water. No spigot means a tank, and a tank means capacity limits and refill time. Confirm the spigot before you book.
• Power. Polishers, extractors, and steamers want a dedicated 15 or 20 amp circuit. A shared garage outlet that trips is an hour gone. A generator is a line item and a noise problem in some neighborhoods.
• Shade and surface. Direct sun makes polishing and coating application unpredictable. Gravel and dirt driveways put dust back on wet paint.
• Rules. HOA and apartment complexes restrict washing, runoff, and generators. Confirm in writing, not verbally.
• Travel. Drive time is bay time you are not billing. Charge it or build it into a minimum job size, and log every mile — that is what how to track mileage for taxes covers.

Coatings are the hardest thing to do mobile, and the reason is cure, not application.

How do I price cure time without giving away a bay?

A coating is not finished when you stop wiping. Most consumer and professional coatings want a dust-free environment for something like 12 to 24 hours, and full hardness continues developing over roughly a week or more depending on product and conditions, with washing typically held off for the first several days. Follow the manufacturer’s data sheet for the specific product — the spread between brands is real.

That window is a cost in two places. In a shop, the bay holding a curing vehicle overnight is a bay that cannot take a morning job, so a coating job is not 18.75 hours, it is 18.75 hours plus a bay night. Price it in or schedule around it deliberately. On a mobile job, the customer’s garage becomes the cure space, which means the quote has to state the garage must be available, dry, and closed, and that outdoor storage voids the result.

Put the aftercare in writing on the invoice, not just verbally: no wash for the stated number of days, no automatic car washes, no bird droppings left to bake. It converts a warranty argument into a document.

How do I sanity-check the price for my market?

Turn the quote into two numbers you can compare across your own jobs.

• Revenue per bay hour. $2,475 over 18.75 hours is $132.00. That figure, tracked across a month, tells you more than any menu comparison.
• Consumables as a share of revenue. $217 against $2,475 is 8.8 percent. When that climbs, either your pad rotation is wasteful or you are underpricing coatings.

Published detailing prices vary by more than double between metros and move with season — coating season, love-bug season, road salt season, and the two weeks before a holiday are all different markets. Treat any published range as a check against an order-of-magnitude error, nothing more. If your computed price sits far above local quotes, look at bay hours and the productive-hours denominator before you cut the rate; if it sits far below, your overhead or your consumable count is understated.

What should I record when the keys go back?

Three things: the actual hours the vehicle occupied the bay, the condition photos from drop-off, and the receipts behind the consumables. Without the first, next month’s quotes are guesses. Without the second, the pet-hair conversation has no evidence. Without the third, the coating you bought is not a deduction.

Keel is the version of that record that fits between jobs. The invoice goes out from the bay in under a minute with your own numbering, your logo, and your payment link rendered as a QR code the customer scans off your screen — Keel carries the link rather than processing the card. Chemical, pad, and coating receipts get photographed at the counter and read on the device by Apple Intelligence: no account, no bank connection, no cloud, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. Mobile legs log as mileage. The Freeboard view — cash minus tax reserve, minus committed work, minus a buffer — is worth having on a coating deposit, which is money in the account for a job you have not finished yet, and getting paid on time is mostly a documentation problem, which is the point of how to get clients to pay. Keel is free with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do I price an auto detailing package by vehicle size?

Set a base hour figure for each package on a compact car, then apply a size multiplier: roughly 1.10 for a sedan, 1.25 for a crossover, 1.50 for a three-row SUV or minivan, and 1.60 for a full-size pickup. Multiply the hours, apply your loaded bay-hour cost, add consumables, then divide by one minus your target margin.

How much should I charge for paint correction?

Time it rather than looking it up. A one-step enhancement and a two-step correction are different products with roughly double the hours between them, and the hours change with paint hardness, defect depth, and how many panels need a test spot. Price from your own bay-hour cost, add pads and abrasives as consumed, and quote the size class you actually have in front of you.

Should I charge extra for pet hair?

Yes, and put it on the quote as a conditional line before the car arrives. Heavy pet hair adds one to three hours of brushing, pumice work, and repeat extraction, and it frequently needs a second pass. Confirm the condition at drop-off with a photo, text the revised number, and start only after the customer replies.

How do I price mobile detailing versus shop detailing?

Same bay-hour build, plus the site conditions. Charge for travel time, and quote water and power explicitly — no spigot means tank capacity and refill time, and a shared garage circuit that trips costs an hour. Set a minimum job size so a short drive does not eat the margin, and refuse coatings where there is no dry, closed garage for the cure window.

How long does a ceramic coating need before the car can be washed?

Follow the product data sheet, because brands differ. In general terms, coatings want a dust-free environment for something like the first 12 to 24 hours, and most manufacturers ask that washing wait several days while hardness continues to develop over roughly a week or more. Put the specific number for your product in writing on the invoice.

Why is my detailing shop busy but not profitable?

Usually two leaks. Condition problems absorbed instead of billed — pet hair, sand, smoke — and productive bay hours overstated in the cost build, which makes every hourly figure downstream too low. Track actual in-bay hours per vehicle for a month against what you quoted, and the gap will point directly at the packages that need repricing.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.