Headlight Restoration vs. Replacement: Which Is Right for Your Car?

Brighten Your Light offers Standard Restoration polishing for cloudy, hazy, or lightly yellowed lenses at $129 + WA sales tax per vehicle for both headlights or Heavy Oxidation polishing for deeply yellowed, rough, or heavily hazy lenses at $159 + WA sales tax per vehicle for both headlights, with mobile service at your driveway. Assembly replacement is a separate repair that may involve parts, fitment, and labor.

The matchup: Standard Restoration is $129 + WA sales tax per vehicle for both headlights for cloudy, hazy, or lightly yellowed lenses; Heavy Oxidation is $159 + WA sales tax per vehicle for both headlights for deeply yellowed, rough, or heavily hazy lenses. Compare the selected service with the replacement parts and labor for your vehicle.

And the OEM number usually doesn’t stop at the parts line: many vehicles need partial bumper removal to physically swap the units, which adds labor at a shop, or a rental car if you’re outsourcing the swap. Restoration skips both — there’s no trim to pull, no clips to break, and no dealer parts delay.

The full price tiers are spelled out on the pricing page — the same restoration options and prices shown on the booking flow — and where we currently come to you is on the service area map.

Restoration isn’t a fit for every headlight. Knowing where the line sits saves you from paying for a service that can’t deliver what you need.

Cracked or chipped housings: a crack in the polycarbonate lets moisture in and defeats any clear-coat seal. Replacement is the only fix — bonding the crack holds for a season at best and usually reseals itself within months.

Dead internal components: if the LED board, ballast, or reflector inside the housing has failed, restoration can’t bring the light output back. New assembly, full stop.

Lenses beyond UV rescue: there’s a limit to how deep the oxidation goes. A light haze clears with sanding and compounding; deeply pitted or crazed polycarbonate is approaching its service end and a fresh housing returns more value than a perfect polish on a fragile surface. We’ll tell you on-site if your lens is in that zone — the call is yours, not ours.

A proper restoration isn’t a wipe-on kit from the auto-parts aisle — it’s the progressive-sanding pass that removes the oxidised layer of polycarbonate, the machine-compound and polish that brings the clarity back, and the UV-resistant clear coat that locks it in. Done right, the lens returns to factory clarity and the seal holds against the same UV that hazed the original coat.

12-month clarity warranty: every Brighten Your Light job carries a written warranty on the UV seal. If the lens hazes back under normal use inside that window, the seal gets redone on the house.

You keep the original OEM polycarbonate on the car — designed for that housing, fitted to those clips, and not waiting on a dealer parts shipment — and you avoid the trim-clip lottery that comes with a swap. On a 90-minute visit you get a same-day result and a sealed lens that holds for 2–3 years on most cars.

Curious how the visit itself runs end-to-end? Prep, payment, and what to do if you need to cancel are on the FAQ page.