The best way to restore your headlights

All headlights get this foggy haze over time. You’ve seen it. It looks like this. There is an easy way to fix this that costs about $25, and doesn’t take special tools, or a ton of elbow grease.

*note, all links to amazon are affiliate links

At this point in the car has seen a lot of time in the sun, so this was a pretty solid level of haze.

I’ve tried several headlight kits, and watched all the youtube options for strategies to clear up that lens. It’s hard work, and always with mediocre results because I didn’t have the professional tools. That was until I discovered a $25 kit from Cerakote that uses a ceramic coating. Instead of just removing all the UV damage it then adds a chemically bonded layer of ceramic coating that blocks UV light. What you get without much work is something like this:

They key here is that it’s actually not much effort to do this. There was sanding involved, but it was very minimal, and it wasn’t the bulk of the work. The last step in the instructions is like magic.

Here are the steps (after you put on the provided gloves):

1. Use a special chemical wipe that removes UV haze. You’ll see the wipe turn yellow, and the headlight will get clearer!
2. Wet down the headlight and use the provided wet/dry sandpaper to buff out the deep stuff.
3. Dry the headlight, they say it has to be “bone dry” because moisture interacts poorly with the next step.
4. Use a second chemical wipe that adds a thin layer of ceramic coating. Here’s where the magic happens. It will fill in all the peaks and valleys by “self leveling” and leave a hard layer of clear UV protection that bonds to the plastic. It will last a long time.

Cerakote has a reputation for high quality ceramic coatings, and they have used that expertise to create this awesome kit. In fact, they’re so confident in the coating they promise this:

GUARANTEED TO LAST AS LONG AS YOU OWN YOUR VEHICLE! – You read it right! We’re so confident in our CERAMIC coating that we’ll stand behind our limited lifetime warranty that it will last as long as you own your vehicle, or we’ll cover the next kit for free. Our chemists developed this kit IN HOUSE at Cerakote HQ. We aren’t re-bottling another company’s product. This is a CERAMIC coating that chemically bonds to your headlights and provides UV protection for as long as you’ll own your vehicle.

-Cerakote’s Guarantee

Of course you have to apply it properly, according to the instructions. But if you do that, this should be the last headlight kit you have to use.

So at this point, this is my personal favorite in terms of headlight strategies. It was amazing to see the transformation with such little effort. I’ve spent some serious time with cordless drills, sanding pads, buffing compounds, etc. This is by far the easiest, and also the most effective strategy I’ve ever seen. If you choose to try it out, consider using one of the affiliate links on this page to purchase it, which will cost you nothing, and will provide a tiny commission to us to support this site.

I was convinced to try this after watching this guy explain why this is the strategy he uses very profitably in his own car detailing business:

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