I'm getting a paint job very soon. How many coats of color and clear should I get for it to look good and last?

 

You post a trick question here.

I'm gonna assume that you are painting the entire car and not just "patching" it.

We had our car painted a little more than a year ago and they sanded down to the primer and then applied a heavy coat of paint and 2 coats of heavy clear coat.

I'm not a auto body painter, but they told us that it's the clear coat layers and not the actual paint that gives a paint job it's perception of depth.

Keep in mind I'm takling about a paint job that has a large number of pearl pigments in the paint.
You might get different results with a flat color.

But, you have to keep in mind the simple things in life. Two light passes with the paint gun equals one heavy pass depending on the person holding the gun.

Clear coat only adds layers ontop of the paint pigments to aide sealing the color on the car.

Sounds like the body shop is on the cheap side of things and I would go and check other body shops in town.

look at the sig pic below and it will show you a single paint two clearcoat step process.

 

Yeah, I'm getting the entire car painted. The guy paints at a dealership and on the side out of his garage. He said he'll do whatever I want and however many coats I want. I just wondered how many coats I should tell him to do.

 

i would say that between 2-4 coats of color is fine. if you are going to wet sanding the clear coat, than i would have put on about 4 or more coats. that will give more that enough clear to sand.