How to remove scratches from car paint with toothpaste

by Vivaan Khatri | 25/08/2018
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You use toothpaste to clean your teeth and eliminate bacteria every day. Little do you know that toothpaste could be a helpful tool to remove scratches from your car paint. Why is toothpaste and how can it help remove the scratch? Let’s find out!

Toothpaste is a familiar thing that each and every family must own one. Besides the main purpose of whitening your teeth, this composition also plays as the abrasive substance when necessary. Toothpaste is a kind of sandpaper but lighter, much softer, so it means that anything you can do with sandpaper, you can do it with toothpaste, too. Any flaws on your car paint can easily be handled by it. These steps will show you how to deal with this problem effectively.

Step 1: Choose the right toothpaste

You should remember to prefer new whitening toothpaste with tartar protection for its particular rough texture. Whitening toothpaste has a high amount of abrasives like calcium carbonate. You should always check the RDA (Relative Dentin Abrasion) number written on the toothpaste tube. The number ranges from 4 to 200. The higher the RDA is, the better the abrasive quality is.

toothpaste and toothbrush

Toothpaste is more than just a whitening composition

Step 2: Estimate how bad the scratch is

To do this, you need to use your fingernails. You gently drag one of them to measure the scratch, if your fingernail gets stuck in the gap, you don’t need to read the rest of this article. Folks, you should keep in mind that not every scratch is fixable. Sometimes, the result doesn’t come out as you want. 
Why can’t you apply toothpaste for every single car scratches? The exterior of most cars has four layers: Clearcoat, base coat, primer and body panel. If only the clear coat is scratched, you can use this trick. If the damage penetrates too deep, don’t waste money on toothpaste. What you need is a professional scratch removal product or just have your cars repainted.   

Step 3: Cleaning the scratching area 

This is an important step, and you have to do this it thoroughly. If you don’t carefully clean the scratching area, it will leave a lot of sand and dirt which will eventually cause more scratches or fill in the gap of the scratch. The best way is to wash it with a bucket of water, some soap, and a towel. You don’t need to use a hose which consumes too much water. You just have to clean and wash it until you can see your reflection in the scratching area and then wait for it to dry. Afterward, you should gently check with your hands to make sure that all the dirt has been washed away.  

clean car with microfiber cloth
Using a microfiber cloth for a better result

Step 4: Remove the scratch

After finishing step 2, you can now move on to the removing process. You will need to prepare two things: a dry microfiber cloth and of course, toothpaste. We should use microfiber cloth because it can easily squeeze in every corner of the scratch. You put a sufficient amount of toothpaste onto the cloth and then apply it to the affected area, slowly rub it. Make sure that you have filled up every cut until everything is done. Then, you can lift the cloth off and admire the result. Pay attention! Don’t you ever put the toothpaste on the scratch, it may expand it and make it worse.

toothpaste on car paint

Directly putting toothpaste onto the scratch is not highly recommended

Step 5: Wash away all the remaining toothpaste

When the buffing process is done, you need to rinse off the remaining toothpaste left on the car body before it dries off, or else, it can damage the paint job. Try to remove it with a wet towel and avoid touching the newly buffing scratch. Once again, hoses are not recommended because it can wash away the toothpaste filled in the scratch. 

toothpaste scratches removal

The last step is to use a towel to rinse off the remaining toothpaste

You also may want to repeat these steps all over again for 2 or even more times in case of the scratch is still visible and there is more than one scratch.

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