As much as you would like to cling on to your car window tints, everything deteriorates with time and age. It has to be removed and replaced. Generally, the ‘life’ of your car’s tint films varies on many things: its quality, how much direct sunlight the tint is exposed to, and the quality of the installation.
As a rule of thumb, expect that you will get what you pay for. Cheap quality and installed car tints is expected to begin degrading in just a matter of months with long exposures under the sun and with humid weather. Meanwhile, high quality tint films which are installed properly and with greater effort can last for a couple of years easily under normal conditions. Hybrid films can last 5 years or more, and sputtered or deposited films will last up to a decade and sometimes more.
You will know that you need to replace your car window tints when you start to see these signs:
- Purpling — Purple film is caused by non-metallic dyes in the film breaking down and changing color, it turns a little more purple than black or gray.
- Bubbling –the adhesive used to apply the tint to the window is failing. You can spot little packets of air making its way between the glass window and the tint film itself. It starts with one bubble, and many more will follow
