If you have a small dent in your car door, you may be inclined to have a professional dent repair done. However, there are more creative approaches for small car dents. An auto body and paint shop can transform the appearance of a dent in ways you could have never imagined. Here is how.

Racing Strips and Flames

Nothing hides a dent quite like racing stripes and flames. Artistically painting either on your vehicle right over the dent area strategically hides the dent. Additionally, if you place the darker color used in the indentation of the dent and then surround the dent with a lighter color, you cannot even tell that there is a dent there unless you put your finger in the dent!

Trompe L'Oeil

Trompe l'oeil literally means "trick the eye" in French. This is a unique form of painting that lends amazing three-dimensional images to two-dimensional surfaces. Better still, this form of painting can be used to hide damaged areas in ways that completely fool everyone who looks at the side of your vehicle. You will have to find a master auto painter/artist to create this look, but when he or she is done, you will be hard-pressed to find the original dent just by looking at the door.

Classic Bull's Eye

This is really a tongue-in-cheek paint design, but it is very effective. Placing the center of the bull's eye right over the dent hides the dent. Painting a dart or arrow that sticks to the center of the bull's eye really makes it look like the vehicle was a target, like some sort of post-apocalyptic vehicle in Mad Max or the like. It works even better if your vehicle is already a bit of a rusted-out "beater."

An Eye

In sculpture, the eyes of statues are actually indented, punctuating the depth of eyes and making them appear less flat. If you use a small dent on your vehicle to create an eye, an eye for a human figure, or an eye for an animal, the dent does the same thing here for the painting as it does in sculpture. It creates more depth and a truer appearance of something real. It does double duty if you are a private investigator (i.e., a P. "eye") or you do a lot of research for your job. It works on vehicles for pest extermination too, so that is also something to consider.