Best Automotive Paint Guns: It’s Time for a Fresh Coat

Maybe you've found the perfect project car, but the paint is faded and peeling off. That's not the kind of patina you want. Perhaps you're ready to take your current ride to the next level with a new color. No matter your motivation, paint work is one of the more daunting car projects, even to the mechanically gifted. I certainly wasn’t feeling confident the first time I picked up a spray gun, but if there’s hope for me, there’s hope for you!

Start out watching some YouTube videos, get a cheap basic spray gun and some scrap metal. Once you get the hang of the basics, move up to spraying primer and consider a kit or a fancier gun, like one from this list. I've put together a list of a few of the best automotive paint guns as a starting point as you explore the next level of automotive project! Let's dive in.

As I put together this guide to the best automotive paint gun, I drew on a few years of commercial painting experience, as well as a bunch of research in the automotive space. The Drive already has a guide for best beginner paint guns so this guide will feature a value pick, but I also included a number of more expensive choices. For all but one of my picks here, a good air compressor setup (compressor, oil/water separator, and maybe an air dryer) is essential. If you’re thinking about cranking out a serious automotive paint job, then this guide is for you. 

My personal experience was in the coatings world, with epoxies and urethanes mostly, so I turned to Eastwood and Pittsburgh Spray Equipment, and the Amazon review section to make sure I was getting you the absolute best advice on the Internet. Some topics are harder to untangle, and even in paint guns, you run across people who complain about having to clean the gun frequently (that's part of the deal, man!). I've done the research so you can get to the fun part: slingin' paint on your project.

The best automotive paint gun out there is the 3M Performance Spray Gun Kit. This gun is lightweight and has a unique replaceable heads that make switching materials easy, and recovering from mishaps simple. Though, if you want a workhorse that'll get the job done, the basic Cambell Hausfield HVLP Spray Gun is a great choice. If you take the time to thin your material properly, and get the spray pattern dialed in, this gun will get the job done. 

When we start shopping for tools and products, we never overlook the secondhand market. In fact, it’s usually the first place I look. Whether you’re scrolling through Amazon’s Renewed section, eBay for car parts or tools, or flipping through the pages of Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, you have hundreds of thousands of used tools, parts, and gear ready to be shipped to your doorstep. Refurbished to like-new status, they’ll be willing to give you many more years of faithful service all while saving you money. 

If those options don’t have what you need, your local salvage yard is great for car parts, while swap meets are a great resource you should tap. Just Google either and head on down.  

To make your secondhand search easier, here are two tips to finding the best deals and making sure your new-to-you stuff wasn’t destroyed by the previous owner. 

What to Consider When Buying Automotive Paint Gun

When shopping for an automotive paint gun you want to look for a lot of the same things that make a great paint gun. I did skip over two categories while assembling this guide: electric airless, and pressure pot setups. Electric airless, or airless for that matter, are more designed for volume and for spraying on a lot of paint quickly. That’s a combination that’s sure to leave drips. Pressure pots are supposed to be incredibly smooth, but their purpose is to let painters apply large amounts of material without stopping to refill as often. 

That aside, when selecting a type of paint gun for automotive work your main choices are going to be HVLP (definition below) or turbine setups. Though the turbine systems are more expensive, they’re portable and self-contained, and don’t require a separate — read, expensive — air compressor.

This is the traditional style of paint gun, and most feature a gravity feed hopper that supplies the paint to the air stream. The name means High Volume Low Pressure, meaning the high volume of air required from the compressor at relatively low pressure. You have to have a serious air compressor to run an HVLP gun, and that's mostly because a drop in pressure in the middle of a paint job is just about the worst thing that can happen, short of dragging your airline across your fender. 

One important consideration beyond the air compressor itself is the equipment needed to make sure you have clean, dry air. You'll need a water/oil separator and in more humid climates you may even need an air dryer, so count the whole cost before you commit. 

A turbine paint gun is basically identical to a regular HVLP gun, but it uses a turbine system to supply the air needed to atomize the paint. There are tons of them out there, some suspiciously cheap, but there are two basic levels: 2-stage "entry-level" systems are suitable for thinner paints, like color and clear coats, and 4- and 5-stage units, with more pressure and power for thicker paints. 

Cleanliness is perhaps the most important virtue when dealing with paint guns. I've suffered through paint jobs with poorly maintained guns, and I'll tell ya: do it right, or you'll suffer. Being able to disassemble and clean a gun is essential, and when considering a paint gun you want one with a decent tool too. The cheaper ones on Amazon and eBay will have tools, but they often deform or break if made poorly. 

You'll want a gun that's no heavier than necessary since you'll be holding it at arm’s length for long stretches at a time. That, and you'll want something with a longer trigger, like many of these. A light trigger pull is nice, as is the ability to get a couple of fingers on it. If you have a choice between two- and four-finger trigger designs, get the bigger one. 

I didn't get into this too much, but HVLP guns do use a high volume of air, far more than is needed for running a nailgun. When spraying a car you could easily spend an hour with the trigger pulled, or more. You want an air compressor setup that's going to be able to keep up with the gun easily, with enough capacity to ensure you don't have drops in pressure at the gun while you are spraying. 

On average you can expect to spend several hundred, to over $1,000, getting an automotive spray gun. I didn’t throw anything on this list for more than a grand, but adding in the purchase of a proper compressor can easily push the price over the hill. Now, if you’re looking to upgrade your current setup, and you already have a compressor, spending less than $500 will get you a great gun. A basic gun will be well under $100, while $20 to $500 will get you a kit with everything you need to finish your project. At the top end, right around the $500 mark, you can get into decent turbine systems, but those start there and go way, way up.

You’ve got questions. The Drive has answers.