What is the difference between car wax and polish?

What is car wax?

A wax in its natural form comes in many guises from vegetable waxes i.e carnauba to animal waxes i.e. bees wax. Its is the natural properties of some of these waxes that make them ideal for use in car waxes. The most popular for use in the automotive industry is carnauba wax. What makes this type of wax ideal is that it is

1. virtually insoluble in water, so won’t immediately disappear after each wash or rain shower
2. has a melting point of 82-86 °C so will withstand the high daylight summer temperatures without melting off your car
3. although one of the hardest waxes to be found in its natural form it produces a durable and very glossy finish when combined with other waxes/ingredients used to produce a softer product that can be more easily applied to paintwork.

Most car waxes will therefore be a combination of the natural wax, solvents, silicone fluids, other waxes and colorants. Some will also contain abrasives, depending on the product being developed.In giving your paintwork its shine, your wax will effectively be “smoothing” out the surface of the paint by “filling” in many of the imperfections in the paintwork.

Unfortunately if your paintwork is suffering from oxidation, dullness or swirls there is only so much “filling” that the wax can achieve and all you are effectively doing is covering up and hiding the true nature of why your car is not looking as good as it should.

One other category of “wax” is the “synthetic wax” or “sealant”. These have various other added ingredients that change how the product adheres to your paintwork giving a longer lasting and more durable finish.

What is a Car Polish?

In contrast to a wax a car polish is a product that uses an abrasive action to remove very fine layers of the top coat protection to flatten out the surface to ensure and equal reflection of the light and thus a highly polished look. Such products come in varying degrees of abrasiveness from medium to ultra fine. The quality modern polish will be made of what is known as diminishing abrasives which break down into further smaller particles as they are worked on the paint thus getting finer and finer the more they are “polished” into the paint.

This avoids the need to go through varying steps of abrasiveness in different bottles to achieve a highly polished look. Many polishes also contain gloss enhancing oils which further help to provide a deep look shine to the paint work.

What however is missing by just applying your polish is any protection to the polished paintwork, which is where your wax comes in to protect all the hard work you have just put in polishing and a achieving that deep gloss shine. Which, using your wax or sealant, you will now protect for a few to several months (depending on how often your car is used, how it is stored, the wax you have used and the environment).