Short version: a door ding with the paint intact costs $150–$250 to fix with paintless dent repair at Waxman Collision in Jersey City, usually the same day. A small dent up to about three inches is $250–$450, and two or three dings on the same panel are priced together at $250–$500 rather than one by one. The price changes when the paint did not survive: a ding that chipped the finish at the point of impact is a $599 touch-up, and a dent with cracked paint or a sharp crease is body work plus paint — a door repaired and painted from $600. Below: what each kind of small dent costs, how to tell which one you have from a photo, and when a ding is worth an insurance claim (almost never).
Door ding and small dent repair prices
These are our own prices, the same ones on our paintless dent repair page — not a national average. Size, depth, where the dent sits and whether the paint is broken decide the line; a daylight photo from a low angle usually tells us which one yours is on.
| Small dent | Fix | Price | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Door ding — coin to golf-ball size, paint intact | Paintless dent repair | $150–$250 | same day |
| Small dent up to about three inches, paint intact | Paintless dent repair | $250–$450 | same day to 2 days |
| Two or three dings on the same panel | PDR, priced together | $250–$500 | same day to 2 days |
| Ding with a paint chip at the point of impact | PDR plus touch-up | PDR price + $599 touch-up | 1–2 days |
| Sharp crease, or dent with cracked paint | Body work, paint and blend | $500–$1,200 · door from $600 | 3–7 days |
| Dent in a plastic bumper cover | Bumper repair and paint, not PDR | from $450 | 2–3 days |
What a door ding is, and why it is the cheapest dent there is
A door ding is the mark another car's door edge leaves in yours: a shallow, round dimple the size of a coin to a golf ball, on the flat of a door or a rear quarter panel, at exactly the height of the other car's door. Garages at Newport and Journal Square and the lots along Route 440 produce them by the dozen, and they share three things that make them the easiest dent in the shop. The metal is barely stretched, because the hit was slow and blunt. The dent sits in the open middle of a panel, where a technician can reach behind it through the door frame. And the paint almost always survives, because a door edge has rubber or plastic on it. That combination is what paintless dent repair was invented for: the low spot is pushed up from behind with a shaped rod, read against a reflected line board, and the high edge is tapped down from outside — no filler, no sanding, no paint, no color to match. That is why it is $150–$250 and usually done while you wait.
Door ding repair cost: $150–$250, and what pushes it up
Within that range, four things move the number: size (a coin is the bottom, a golf ball the top), depth, whether the ding sits on a flat or on a body line, and how easy the panel is to reach from behind. A ding on a door is the easy case. The same ding on a rear quarter panel, where there is no door frame to work through and the inner structure is doubled, takes longer and can need the tail light out — that is where a ding becomes a dent and lands at $250–$450. Two or three dings on one panel share the setup, so they are priced together at $250–$500 instead of $150–$250 each; the reasoning is the same as hail, where dozens of dents on a hood cost far less per dent than one ding does. The per-dent logic, and what a dent on every other part of the car costs, is in our dent repair cost guide.
Small dents that are not door dings
Not every small dent is a ding, and the difference is in the shape, not the size:
- Shopping-cart dents. A cart hits lower and harder than a door, often on a fender or a rear quarter, and sometimes leaves a short crease. Round and shallow, it is PDR at $150–$450. Creased, it is body work.
- Crease dents. A sharp fold — from a bike handlebar, a trailer hitch, a pole scraped at an angle — stretches the metal along the fold line, and stretched metal does not shrink back flat. A short, soft crease on a flat panel can sometimes be worked with PDR; a sharp one, or one across a body line, is repaired, filled, primed and painted: $500–$1,200, and a door from $600.
- Hood and roof dimples. Broad, shallow, paint intact — acorns, a dropped tool, a single hailstone. Good PDR candidates at $150–$450 each, unless there are dozens, which is hail pricing by panel.
- Dents in the bumper. A bumper cover is plastic, and plastic needs heat, plastic repair and refinishing. That is bumper repair, from $450, however small the dent looks.
- A dent on a panel edge or over a brace. No room to work from behind, so the tools cannot reach it. Some of these are glued and pulled from outside; some are conventional repair. We tell you which before you drive over.
When the ding chipped the paint
Look at the very center of the ding. A bare metal door edge, or a chip of road grit caught between the two doors, can take the paint off at the point of impact even when the rest of the dimple is glossy. The dent still comes out with PDR, but the chip needs paint: on a single chip that is our $599 touch-up, done without refinishing the whole panel. A ding with the paint cracked in a ring around it, or scraped through to primer, is no longer a PDR job at all — the dent is repaired conventionally and the panel is painted and blended into its neighbors, which is what the $500–$1,200 line and the "door from $600" price cover. Which scratches polish out, which get touched up and which need the panel resprayed is on our scratch repair page.
Can you fix a door ding yourself?
Sometimes, and we would rather you knew the odds first. The suction cups and glue-pull kits sold online can lift a broad, shallow dimple on a flat panel — they work by pulling the low spot up, which is one half of the repair. The other half, tapping down the ring of high metal the pull leaves behind, is the part that takes a line board and a few hundred hours of practice, and it is what separates a repaired door from a door with a lumpy halo on it. Hot water and a hair dryer do nothing to steel; they occasionally help a plastic bumper. Hammering from behind with anything cracks paint. If you try a kit and it does not work, stop: a ding that has been pulled and over-pulled is harder to finish than the original, and it is the one case where a $150 job can turn into a $600 one.
Is a door ding worth an insurance claim?
Almost never. A $200 ding against a $500 or $1,000 deductible pays nothing and still puts a claim on your record. The exception is the other driver: if the person who dinged you left a note, or a garage camera caught it, the repair goes on their liability insurance and your deductible does not apply — and at $150–$250 most people simply pay it rather than wait on an adjuster. A ding that came with a bigger hit, a side-swipe or a parking-lot collision, is collision repair and belongs on the claim with everything else. The decision math for every small repair on the car is in cosmetic damage and insurance.
Door dings at lease return and trade-in
Lease-end inspectors carry a gauge the size of a credit card: a ding smaller than the card with the paint unbroken usually passes as normal wear, a dent larger than it is billed at dealer retail on your final statement. Three door dings on a leased car can turn into a four-figure line that way, and a shop fixes the same three for $250–$500 a few weeks before the inspection — see lease return restoration. At trade-in the argument is different but the answer is the same: PDR leaves the factory paint and the factory paint thickness, so there is nothing for the appraiser's meter to find and nothing to disclose.
Not sure which line your ding is on? Send 4–8 daylight photos — the whole car, the panel, and the ding close up from a low angle so the reflection shows its shape — and a real estimator answers the same business day, in writing, free: start the photo estimate. Waxman Collision, 18-24 Bayview Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07305, open daily 8am–8pm, (551) 325-3030.