Faded black paint - is it worth restoring?

To answer your question.........will it make a big difference to it's appearance? Yes it can when done correctly.

How long will it last? Will honestly depend on your after care processes. The better you look after it, regarding safer wash routines, the longer it will stay looking well. I would suspect that your work friend had a quicker polishing treatment done, probably using a temporary glaze-like product. This is where it pays to do some research on proper car care providers. When done correctly, you are effectively reconditioning the paintwork, removing microscopic layers of clear coat and thus removing whatever defects where within that layer. The results will depend on the intensiveness of the treatment you go for( how much clear coat will be removed in essence. Basically in lay mans terms, a treatment removing lets say 6-7 microns of clear on a well weathered vehicle, will yield better results in defect removal and richness restored to the paintwork than a treatment designed to remove only 1-2 microns. There is other factors involved including the softnest/hardness of the paint and potentially the need to perform further stages of "refining" to the paintwork to remove potential micro marring from the initial more aggressive polishing stages. You can also encounter rock hard paint which takes much more work to remove some clear. I've a 2016 E-Class in at the moment which has taken multiple aggressive compounding stages to even get it to about 85% clear coat infliction removal!!).

Regarding the 2 names you mentioned, both do extremely good work and your car would be in good hands with either. Price-wise, what will you pay? That's the impossible question. Different detailers will value their time and work differently, have different over head costs, etc. Some will spend 10 hours performing X treatment, another will spend 20+ hrs on what a treatment by the same title. Don't get too hung up on treatment titles as they are only titles, and can differ greatly in practice in different providers. What i would suggest is work out what your budget is, and see what can be done within that budget. You might get a bit of a shock at some of the quotes, but this is the reality of this type of work now. It's very labour intensive to achieve the right results, no more than getting any other skilled operator to work on a job for 2-5 days depending on the level of the treatment.

Hope this has helped a little.

Seriously OP, I'd follow Vectra's advice. I was the same before I started (worried about damage) and I got a door from a scrapper to try on. If you are careful, keep an eye on what is going on and take your time, you'll be fine.

For inspiration, materials, etc, see my post here.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=108326827&postcount=5542