Welcome to the Toronto wrapping scene. Tread lightly here!
Car wraps and PPF are more popular than ever. From a niche expert service it turned into a glitzy, Instagram-driven business attracting a lot of young entrepreneurs who very often neglect many critical requirements needed for a modern wrap shop.
Wrapping a car is not regulated. There is no license, no governing body, and no barrier to entry. Anyone can buy vinyl, watch a few videos, open Instagram, and start calling themselves a wrap shop. Entry investment is fairly low and there is a misconception that this business brings a lot of money. As a result, Toronto market has turned into one of the most toxic wrapping scenes in Canada and North America. Bad actors, sketchy shops, questionable materials and lack of techniques - this is what you have to navigate as a customer and the gamble is your car and a few thousand dollars that you will pay for the wrap.
This article exists for one reason: to help you avoid turning your car into a learning experiment. It is not a sales page. It is blunt on purpose. If you spend 15–20 minutes reading it, you’ll know more about the wrap industry than most first-time customers — and more than some shops.
How to protect yourself from paying for mediocre quality and make sure your car doesn't get damaged.
Custom Wraps has been in operation since 2011 being one of the 10 first wrapping companies in GTA. One of the first in Canada to become 3M Preferred Installation company. The first in Canada to become PDAA master Certified Installation company. The only company in Canada being certified by 3M, Avery, Arlon and PDAA at the same time. Stellar reputation. Flawless track record among clients. Several installers who worked at our shop over the years opened their own successful wrapping companies based on the training and experience they received at Custom Wraps.
In short, we know wrapping business inside out.
We've seen a lot of bad wraps done by other shops. Many scratched cars, broken parts, unhappy customers. We've heard a lot of stories about clients being swindled, tricked, given false information by unscrupulous wrap shops just trying to score an extra dollar.
Now we can give you free advice on what to pay attention to when you contact a wrapping shop to get a quote. Spend a few minutes, don't be lazy, do your research and it will save you a lot of frustration and real damage.
Ask these 8 questions when shopping for a place to wrap your car and you will not regret!
For over 15 years we've been mastering the art of wrapping cars.
1. What vinyl or PPF brand and product will be used on my car?
This is the single most important question you can ask.
There is no such thing as “just vinyl.” Different films behave differently, install differently, age differently, and fail differently.
Answers you want to hear:
For colour-change wraps:
3M (Wrap Film Series 2080)
Avery Dennison (Supreme Wrapping Film)
These are premium cast films. They are predictable, removable, and proven long-term. They cost more — for a reason.
“If two shops quote wildly different prices for the same job, they are not using the same material.”
There are also newer and niche brands you may hear about:
KPMF – reputable, unique colors, slightly different behavior than 3M/Avery
Inozetek – extremely glossy, looks great on Instagram, but it is calendered vinyl (thick and wants to shrink over time). Stay away from it. In our experience, it is very likely to start peeling and lifting in deep recessed areas.
Then there are brands you should be cautious about:
VViViD
TeckWrap
Vinyl Frog
No-name or “private label” films
These are thicker, less conformable, and far more likely to lift, shrink, or fail. These are DIY materials at best.
One more rule:
“If the shop won’t put the exact vinyl brand and series on your invoice, walk away.”
These are the two top quality PPF brands. They look a bit different on the car and slightly differ in level of protection but both would be a solid choice.
STEK, Suntec, Llumar - pretty good products. Same gloss level and protection as the leading brands but some issues with adhesive, peeling have been observed.
In general, now there has been a noticeable quality jump among most PPF brands.
What you really have to stay away from is the "House brands" PPF. If a shop says "We use our own PPF line/brand" - run. Most Chinese PPF manufacturers offer customizable packaging for their PPF. Some use this to order knock-offs, some slap their own name on a product that costs 5-10 times cheaper than 3M or XPEL and will fail with high probability.
Material choice directly affects price, longevity, and removability. If you want context on why prices vary so much, see How much a car wrap actually costs.
2. Can you tell me who is working on my car and what training they have?
Most wrap problems are not material problems. They are installer problems.
In reality, the majority of installers in the market likely have never had any formal training these days. Many shops claim certifications they don’t have.
It was absolutely unheard of 10 years ago. You had to be trained and certified by 3M, Avery or other reputable company to be able to wrap cars.
Most new shops are hiring self-taught guys who have no idea how vinyl works, how adhesive behaves and what needs to be done to prevent failures in 1-3 years after the wrap is installed.
A solid answer sounds like:
A specific installer name
3M or Avery certification
Willingness to show credentials
3M and Avery both maintain public lists of certified installers. If someone claims certification, you can verify it on 3M Canada or Avery Dennison websites.
Please note that certifications from other companies are normally very formal, don't require testing and don't mean much
Red flags:
“All our guys are experienced” (no names)
“We don’t really do certificates anymore”
Defensiveness when asked
“It’s not rude to ask who is holding an x-Acto knife against your car's paint.”
Subcontracting is not automatically bad as many of the best installers in the industry are too expensive to be hired by one single company full-time — but you still deserve to know who is working on your car and what qualifies them.
You can read about wrapping training and certifications that we have in details on our "About us" page.
3. Can you walk me through your surface preparation process?
This is a trick question — and a very revealing one.
A proper wrap is not installed on a “clean-looking” car. It is installed on a surgically clean surface.
On the other hand some detailing-first shops have a tendency to "over-prep" new cars doing unnecessary paint correction and clay-bar cleaning to sell extra services and inflate the cost.
We strongly believe that a professional wrapping company should not start with detailing and will not be keeping detailing or car washing as a core service.
People who have been cleaning cars all their life know as much about vinyl as a construction helper about architectural engineering. Car wrapping developed in signage industry, all major vinyl and PPF brands come from the brands that have been making thousands of vinyl types for signage and graphics for decades. Only those who know graphics industry can become true knowledgeable wrap installation professionals.
Yet, surface preparation is extremely important.
Typical professional prep includes:
Initial wash and degreasing
Paint decontamination (clay bar or chemicals)
Isopropyl alcohol wipe-down
Detail cleaning of edges, seams, and crevices
Prep alone can take several hours. Many failures trace back to shortcuts here.
“If a shop talks more about wrapping than cleaning, that tells you everything.”
If the answer is “we wash it” or “we wipe it down,” expect lifting edges and bubbles later.
4. How long have you been wrapping cars, and how many have you done?
Experience matters in wrapping — a lot. Even more so in PPF installation. To be considered a decent wrap installer you need to wrap 30-50 cars. That's at least a year of full-time work.
For PPF installer the level of comfortable confidence comes after 300 cars or even more. PPF is an unforgiving material showing every imperfection.
We wrapped over 1000 cars over 15 years and probably 2000+ were wrapped in PPF by us.
Wrapping looks easy in time-lapse videos. It is not. A confident shop will answer this question clearly and comfortably.
Vague answers usually mean:
The shop is very new
The installer is still learning
You are being softened for risk
“Everyone starts somewhere. Your car doesn’t need to be that ‘somewhere.’”
Volume builds skill. Repetition builds consistency. This question helps you gauge both.
There are material ways to gauge shop's experience:
- Explore their website. Does it have actual portfolio with hundreds of cars or just 10 random photos? Are most photos on their web-site generic or show cars in their actual shop?
- Does the shop provide tinting and car detailing services and has a lot of reviews? If so 90% of their reviews are for these simple and cheap jobs. They hardly do a lot of wraps and PPF.
If a wrapping company claims on their website that they wrapped 5000, 8000 or 10000 cars - this is almost certainly a lie. The busiest wrapping company in Canada is very unlikely to do more than 20 cars a month. It would take several decades even for the most successful to get to those numbers. 15 years ago almost none of the GTA wrapping companies existed. 80% of them are less than 5 years old.
5. What warranty do you provide on the installation?
There should be a warranty for any wrap job. Full stop.
Usually there are 2 warranties:
- Material warranty from the manufacturer (usually 10 years for PPF and 2-5 years for Vinyl). This warranty usually doesn't cover much except some very rare defects in chemical formulation of the wrapping film leading to discoloration, yellowing, bubbling and cracking. This almost never happens in real life. (2 cases in my 15 years in this business). 3M says that they have about 40 warranty claims nationwide of which about 8 are actually manufacturer's issues.
- Installation warranty from the wrapping company (6 months - 2 years). This warranty actually covers the bad things that happen from time to time. Edges sometimes lift and peel, there can be a lonely unsqueegeed bubble somewhere on the surface of the vinyl etc. A good company doesn't hide from responsibility and is always there to fix a mistake.
One year on workmanship is standard. Some shops offer more. That’s fine — as long as it’s real.
Be cautious of:
“Lifetime” warranties.
Vague verbal promises
No written coverage
“If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”
Our biggest issue is new shops eager to promise lifetime or many-year warranty on wraps. They haven't been in this business long enough to know what happens to a wrap down the road.
No wrapping vinyl or PPF lasts forever. In real life vinyl typically lasts 4-6 years and then starts to deteriorate. PPF works fine for around 10 years if it is 3M.
Also ask what the warranty does not cover. Understanding limitations matters just as much.
6. How is my vehicle protected while it’s in your care?
Your car should be inside. Locked. Insured.
Minimum expectations:
- Indoor overnight storage
- Alarm or security system
- Garage-keeper liability insurance
A professional shop will not be offended by this question. They expect it.
“If a shop treats this as an inconvenience, that’s a warning sign.”
Risk-free, professional vinyl wraps and paint protection film installation in Toronto
7. What parts do you take off the car for wrapping? What gets disassembled?
This is an important moment and often is perceived by customers in a wrong way. A lot of amateur shops made people believe that wraps require taking half the car apart and that the depth of disassembly somehow equals a professional wrap job. This can't be further from the truth actually.
The golden rule is that a car requires only the necessary minimum of disassembly that would guarantee flawless result. Anything above that minimum is an unnecessary risk.
The ultimate goal of a professional wrap job is a seamless wrap that looks like factory paint. To achieve this we have to take apart or remove several elements of the car exterior:
- Door handles (on all cars except Tesla-type handles flush with the doors surface)
- Emblems and badges (always)
- Trim pieces (front grilles, roof and A-Pillar moldings, fender flares). Only where it is necessary, safe to do and achieves better wrap looks.
- Head and tail lights (very rarely only on certain models and certain car colours)
The rest of the disassembly is not only unnecessary but straight-up dangerous. Shops that remove bumpers and doors are adding days to the installation process, scratch and break every part they touch. In most cases they do this because of lack of understanding of the concept of wrapping and the right techniques.
Hard truth - it is not easier to wrap a bumper when it is removed from the car. It is more difficult actually because it becomes flimsy and very awkward to stretch vinyl on.
These shops are also misleading their customers on one important fact. A wrap is a temporary colour change that would need to be removed in 4-6 years. If the removal requires a lot of disassembly, you are increasing the danger of scratched panels, broken clips and loose panel twofold. During removal actually a lot of shops would just cut the vinyl at the visible edge to avoid removing that light that they did when wrapping the car. That's a risk of a deep cut on your car's paint.
The latest trend in Coloured PPF and clear Paint Protection Film installation is zero disassembly with PRE-CUT film panels used for everything. It creates clean, professional look in reasonable time and with no dangers associated with people who were not factory trained messing with your vehicle.
8. How long will the wrap take from drop-off to pickup?
You will see a lot of shops giving you absolutely different time frames for completing a wrap or a PPF job.
While of course different companies have different process and business models, there should be some reasonable expectations on what a wrap should take.
Too long and too fast are normally a warning sign.
At Custom Wraps most colour-change wraps take 2 days, most PPF jobs - 1 day to complete.
Time is a quality indicator and it doesn't work as a direct correlation in wrapping. Usually the longer a company messes with your car - the less experienced they are and the worst quality result you will get at the end.
Professional wrapping companies are working as well-oiled conveyors. They are interested in getting as many cars done in a month as possible without sacrificing the quality.
To achieve this they do this:
- Use only premium materials. Avery, 3M, XPEL films and vinyl are much more expensive than cheap off-brand stuff but they allow to cut the installation time in half. Also they don't fail which saves time on warranty repairs.
- Only do a necessary minimum of disassembly. Taking the car apart can take days. Full wrap on a Model Y Tesla take 11 hours. If you start taking the bumpers and wheels of the same Model Y, It will drag for 4 days instead of 1-2. No visible difference in the wrap quality will be achieved by doing so.
- Hire only certified experienced installers. Professionals can easily handle a full colour-change wrap by themselves in a couple days while rookies might need a week for the same job.
- Streamline the process. Arrange car drop off at the shop exactly when the vinyl for the wrap is there already and when the company is ready to start working on it. If a car just sits in the shop waiting for its turn for days this is bad both for the client and the business.
Most full colour-change wraps take 2–3 days. That allows for proper install, post-heating, and inspection.
Be cautious of:
“One-day full wraps”
“Leave it for a week or longer”
“Rushed jobs and dragged-out jobs usually end the same way.”
Efficient shops know exactly what to remove, what to leave, and how to manage time.
Bonus Advice: Things People Rarely Tell You
Instagram Is Not a Quality Standard
Some shops are better at content than craftsmanship. A flashy feed does not guarantee consistent results. Most of the really professional seasoned installers in the wrapping business are not even on Instagram and definitely are not on TikTok. We treat it as a serious business, not a sandbox for an influencer. Our clients value real results, not a viral trend.
Many new shops start with Instagram, not with 3M training and certification. In reality it is very easy to make a reel video of a very bad wrap job looking amazing on screen. Don't fall for this trap.
Fake Reviews Are Common
Do your research with wrap companies' reviews. You will notice a lot of patterns with shops that have over 200 reviews. Most of them will be generated very long ago in just a few months and then they come to a trickle or disappear completely in the recent year or so. This is a sign that the reviews are fake.
Many reviews are generated by tint jobs or car detailing jobs that don't really show any proof that a company is experienced in wraps and PPF. If a company manages to get 3-4 5-star reviews a month from actual wrap job clients - it is a great real result.
Unusually Low Prices Have Consequences
Beware of any wrapping outfits advertising on Facebook marketplace and offering super low prices. Cheap vinyl, no experience, rushed labor, serious damage to your car's paint - these are very real risks. Quality has a cost floor.
If you’re comparing pricing, this guide helps: Car wrap pricing explained.
Final Thought
You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to ask better questions.
Good shops welcome them. Bad shops hope you don’t.
Use this list. Trust your instincts. And don’t let anyone rush you into a decision you’ll live with every day.
Serving Toronto, Scarborough, Markham, North York, all GTA
445 Midwest Rd. Unit 31
Scarborough, ON M1P 4Y9
(416) 700-9727
info@customwraps.ca