Not all car dents are equal. Some fix in 30 minutes for $75. Others need a body shop and four days. The first step to knowing what your dent will cost is figuring out what kind of dent it is.
This is the complete visual guide to every kind of car dent we see in our Sacramento shop — what causes each one, whether paintless dent repair (PDR) can fix it, and the real price range to repair it.
Quick reference — the 8 main types of car dents
- Door dings — small, round, paint intact. PDR fixes 99% of these. $75–$125.
- Round dish dents — medium, shallow, paint intact. PDR fixes nearly all. $125–$225.
- Sharp dents — small, deep, often with visible stretch marks. PDR fixes most. $150–$300.
- Crease dents — long line across the panel. PDR can fix — harder + pricier. $250–$500.
- Body line dents — dent crosses or sits on a sharp body curve. Specialist PDR work. $200–$400.
- Hail dents — many small round dents across multiple panels. PDR is the standard repair. Per-panel pricing.
- Deep dents with paint damage — dent + cracked or chipped paint. PDR cannot fix — body shop required.
- Tear / puncture dents — metal is torn, not just deformed. PDR cannot fix — body shop required.
1. Door dings — the most common dent we see
A door ding is the small, round, shallow dent left by another car door swinging into your panel in a parking lot. Door dings are the entry-level repair every PDR shop fixes, and the price is consistent: $75 to $125 in Sacramento for a single ding.
How to identify a door ding: usually about the size of a dime to a nickel, perfectly round or oval, on a vertical panel (door, fender, rear quarter), paint completely intact. Often there’s a small black or matching-color rubber mark from the other door’s edge bumper.
Can PDR fix it? Yes — 99% of door dings come out cleanly in 30 to 60 minutes in your driveway. The paint stays original. Carfax stays clean. See our door ding repair details.
What it costs:
- Single door ding, dime size: $75
- Single door ding, nickel size: $95
- 2 door dings on same panel: $95–$140
- Multiple dings across multiple panels: bundled pricing — usually $40–$60 per ding after the first
2. Round dish dents — the “I backed into something” dent
A dish dent is the larger, round, shallow indentation left when you back into a pole, a shopping cart hits the side at speed, or a basketball lands on the hood. These are bigger than door dings but still relatively easy for PDR work because the deformation is gradual.
How to identify a dish dent: 3–6 inches across, gentle curve into the panel, no sharp edges, paint intact. You can usually fit a fingertip into the center without resistance.
Can PDR fix it? Almost always yes. Dish dents are forgiving because the metal hasn’t been stretched at any single point — it just bowed inward.
What it costs: $125–$225 depending on size and panel location. Hood and roof dish dents are slightly easier than door panel ones because the panel is less curved.
3. Sharp dents — the “I don’t know what happened” dent
Sharp dents are small but deep — a focused point of impact. Usually caused by a rock kicked up by a passing truck, a kid’s bike handlebar, a falling tool, or a sharp object getting between you and another car in a parking lot.
How to identify a sharp dent: small (the size of a quarter or smaller), deep, often with a visible bright spot in the center where the paint may have been pushed thinner. Sometimes there’s a small crack in the clear coat that wasn’t there before.
Can PDR fix it? Most of them, yes. The challenge is that sharp impacts can stretch the metal. A skilled PDR tech can work the stretched metal back, but it takes longer than a door ding. If the clear coat is cracked, the dent itself is fixable but the paint will need a touch-up to look perfect.
What it costs: $150–$300 depending on depth and whether the paint cracked.
4. Crease dents — long, linear, the hardest PDR work
A crease is a long, straight or curved line of damage along the panel. Common causes: a shopping cart dragged along the side of the car, a low concrete divider scraped at speed, another car’s bumper sliding along your door.
How to identify a crease: the damage is a LINE, not a point. It often spans 6 inches to multiple feet. The metal is folded inward along the line, which means every inch of the crease has to be worked individually.
Can PDR fix it? Yes — if the paint is intact. Crease repair is the highest-skill PDR work because each segment of the crease has to be pushed out separately and the surrounding metal has to be relaxed at each step. A 10-inch crease that looks simple is often 2 to 4 hours of tool work.
See our Sacramento crease dent repair page for examples.
What it costs:
- Short crease (under 4 inches): $200–$300
- Medium crease (4–10 inches): $300–$425
- Long crease (over 10 inches): $425–$550
5. Body line dents — dent crosses or sits on a sharp curve
Most cars have sharp, intentional curves on their panels — the body line that runs from front to rear, the wheel arch, the trunk lid edge. These features are designed lines that catch light and make the car look sculpted.
A dent that crosses a body line, or a dent that sits right on the body line, is significantly harder to fix than the same dent on a flat panel. The body line has to come back to its exact original shape or it’ll catch light wrong and the repair will be visible.
How to identify a body-line dent: look for where the deepest part of the dent sits. If it sits on or crosses a sharp edge or character line of the panel, it’s a body-line dent.
Can PDR fix it? Yes, but it takes 2–3x the time of an equivalent flat-panel dent. Body line repair is what separates an experienced PDR tech from a junior one. We’ve been doing body-line work in Sacramento since 2012.
What it costs: add roughly 50–100% to the base dent price. A $150 dish dent that sits on a body line becomes a $225–$300 repair.
6. Hail dents — many small round dents at once
Hail damage is a cluster of small round dents distributed across horizontal panels — hood, roof, trunk, sometimes the tops of fenders and doors. A single storm can produce 30 to 200+ individual dents on one vehicle.
How to identify hail damage: obvious — multiple round dents across multiple panels, all roughly the same size, all on the upward-facing surfaces.
Can PDR fix it? Yes — and PDR is the standard, insurance-preferred method for hail repair. The reason: a body shop would have to repaint every affected panel. PDR fixes the same dents without repainting anything, often at 30–50% of body shop cost.
See our Sacramento hail damage repair page and the hail insurance claim guide.
What it costs:
- Per panel pricing typically $95–$140 depending on dent count and depth
- Total vehicle hail repair: $400 to $4,000 depending on severity
- Insurance almost always covers the full cost minus your deductible
7. Deep dents with paint damage — when PDR cannot help
If the impact was hard enough to crack, chip, or break the paint, paintless dent repair is no longer the right tool. The dent itself might be removable, but you’ll still have damaged paint at the end that needs touch-up or repainting.
How to identify paint damage: look for cracks, chips, bare metal showing, or rust beginning at the impact site.
Can PDR fix it? No — or more accurately, PDR can fix the metal shape, but you’d still need body shop paint work after. For these dents we’ll honestly tell you to go straight to a body shop and not pay us for the metal work that won’t matter once paint has to be done.
What it costs: body shop repair, typically $700–$2,500.
8. Torn or punctured dents — body shop only
If the metal is actually torn (split, with a flap), punctured (a hole through it), or compressed into a fold, PDR cannot help. The metal has to be cut out and replaced, or welded back together.
How to identify a tear: the metal isn’t smooth on the dent surface. You can see a fold, a split, or a hole.
Can PDR fix it? No.
What it costs: body shop work, usually $1,200–$3,500 plus paint.
Aluminum vs steel panel dents — what changes
Most cars use steel body panels. Modern Teslas (Model 3, Y, S, X), Ford F-150 (since 2015), Rivian, and some German luxury cars use aluminum. Aluminum dents are different.
Aluminum behaves differently from steel. It work-hardens faster, it tears more easily under sharp tool pressure, and it has memory characteristics that make it stiffer to coax back into shape. A PDR tech who’s only ever worked on steel will damage an aluminum panel.
We’re aluminum-certified — we use specialized tools, heat-controlled techniques, and have done hundreds of Tesla and aluminum panel repairs. If your car is aluminum, ask your PDR shop directly whether they’re certified before they touch the panel.
Aluminum panel pricing: add roughly 25–40% to the equivalent steel-panel dent price.
Frequently asked questions about car dent types
Can paintless dent repair fix any dent?
No. PDR fixes dents where the paint is intact and the metal hasn’t been torn. That covers about 85–90% of dents people bring to us. Chipped paint, deep gouges, or torn metal need body shop work.
What’s the difference between a dent and a ding?
A “ding” is a tiny, shallow round dent — the size of a dime or smaller. A “dent” is any bigger deformation. We use “door ding” specifically for the small parking-lot type. More on door dings here.
How can I tell if a dent has cracked paint?
Look closely with good light. Run a fingernail very lightly across the dent edge. If you feel a tiny catch or see a hairline crack in the clear coat, the paint is cracked. If the surface is smooth and uniform, the paint is intact.
Can you fix a dent that has a paint scratch but no chip?
Often yes — if the scratch is light (only in the clear coat) we can do the PDR work and then polish out the scratch. If the scratch goes deeper into the color coat or to bare metal, that part still needs touch-up paint.
What if there are multiple dents in one panel?
Bundle pricing applies. The first dent is full price, additional dents on the same panel are typically $40–$60 each. Multi-dent jobs are very efficient because the tools are already set up.
How to get an honest quote on any kind of dent
The fastest way to know what your specific dent will cost: text us a clear photo of it at (916) 585-2554. We’ll identify the type, tell you whether PDR is the right repair, and give you a real price — usually within an hour. Or use our online quote form.
We’ve been classifying and fixing dents in Sacramento since 2012 — 135+ five-star Google reviews, lifetime workmanship warranty, aluminum-certified. We come to you anywhere in our 38-city service area.
No comment