Coverage options vary in name between shops, which doesn't help. We keep ours to three clearly defined levels — here's exactly what each one includes.
Front end
Covers: front bumper, bonnet, both front wings, and mirror caps.
The most popular option for good reason. It covers all the highest-impact surfaces — the areas that take the most stone strikes per mile — with no visible line across the bonnet, because the film wraps the whole panel and terminates at the panel edges.
Suits: most people, most cars. If you're unsure, this is usually the right starting point.
Extended front
Adds: side skirts and sills, the lower rear impact areas, the front of the roofline, and the A-pillars.
The additions address the second tier of damage zones — the stone blasting the front wheels direct along the sills, debris thrown up over the roofline at motorway speed, and the impact areas lower down at the rear. Those side and lower areas are genuinely underrated; they collect a lot of damage that people don't notice until it's significant.
Suits: high-mileage motorway drivers, and anyone keeping the car long-term.
Full vehicle
Covers: every painted panel.
Complete protection, and the only option that fully preserves original paint condition. It's a substantial investment and a multi-day job for a good installer.
Suits: high-value cars, rare or limited-run vehicles, unusual paint finishes that would be expensive or impossible to match, and anything where original paint materially affects resale.
Worth considering: on cars with matte or satin paint from the factory, full coverage is often the only sensible option. Partial coverage creates a visible difference in surface texture that's far more obvious than it would be on gloss.
A practical way to decide
Look at the front of your car in good light. If the chips you can already see bother you, front end is your baseline. If you're also finding damage along the sills, lower rear, or roof edge, extended is worth the step up.
And if the thought of any mark on the paint bothers you — which is a perfectly reasonable position on a car you've spent real money on — full coverage is the only option that actually delivers that.