PAINT: It’ll make or break your ride. It’s a pain to apply, a pain to fix, and a pain to remove. Here’s a guide to common types of automotive paint. The options that are typically easiest and cheapest are listed first.

Aerosol can type: Similar to the standard paint (detailed below), but this comes in an aerosol so you don’t have to mix it and no other specialized equipment is necessary. Although the above paint isn’t car-specific, many parts stores can mix touch-up paint to match your car perfectly.

Standard paint: this comes in a can similar to house paint, but must be mixed prior to being loaded into the gun, such as the one shown above. Beyond paint, your car’s primer (underneath the paint) and clear coat (over the paint) are distributed through a similar gun.

Plasti-Dip- This creates a thin plastic coating after it has dried, and can sometimes be temporary so that you can peel it off after a month or two. It can come in an aerosol can like above or out of a regular gun if you will be using a lot of it.

Vinyl Wrap: Here, a screen printer will print colors, patterns, text, or images onto a sheet of adhesive-backed vinyl, which will usually be installed at a shop near you. This is only temporary; if you leave it on too long, the wrap will crack and become nearly impossible to remove.