Given that over half of all cars are monochromatic shades, it’s no surprise you’re interested in a new look, a new color or finish or something more artistic. For years, the solution was a custom paint job, but the mid-1990s marked a revolution in vehicle customization: vehicle vinyl wrap.
WHAT IS VINYL CAR WRAP?
Since the 1950s, vinyl was used for custom lettering, logos, and decals, but full car wraps didn’t catch on. Then, in 1993, a mundane, yet revolutionary, idea came along: Why not vinyl wrap a car in its entirety? Germany mandated all taxis be colored beige, but nowhere stipulated paint. Kay Premium Marking Films saved the day with a beige vinyl, making practically any vehicle regulation-compliant in just a few hours.
Vinyl car wrap is a blend of polyvinylchloride (PVC) polymer, from which the word “vinyl” comes from, with various additives to make it flexible, resistant to ultraviolet light, and add color. These ingredients are blended, cast onto moving sheets, then baked and cured.
VINYL TODAY
The resulting vinyl sheet can be as thin as 2 mil, just two thousandths of an inch thick. After adhesive application, vinyl car wrap sheeting may be cut into smaller rolls, for individual consumers, or sent to printers, for custom graphics as simple or as complex as you can imagine.
Put most simply, vinyl car wrap is adhesive-backed plastic sheeting, but oh what we can do with a roll of plastic today! In the last few years, we’ve come a long way from solid colors, and innovators in the car wrap industry have developed metallic, reflective, matte, gloss, pearlescent, color-changing, even factory-matching and Pantone colors, not to mention beautiful, stunning, and complex patterns and combinations.
