FYI price is largely determined by the amount of work and the quality of the paint used. Second factor is what's painted
For high metallic colors such as silver, gold, or white pearl you will generally need to do a basecoats bland into other panels then clear them. The best painters can match those colors good enough to paint a bumper along since the horizontal seams don't really make slight color differences apparent, but paint a panel like a door and not blending is going to have a slight color difference no matter how good you are at tinting colors . Especially on newer cars since the cheap fucks put basecoats on so thin it's transparent. You can actually see the ecoat sealer through it making me t almost impossible to match perfectly. Darker colors and solids most painters can either match perfect or close enough you won't see it so no adjacent blends required.
If your panel is really chipped up best practice is to sand the area down to metal and prime, block, refinish the area. That an extra half hour to hour per panel and an extra 20-30 bucks per panel in primer. A whole hood hammered with chips is an extra two hours labor vs fixing one or two little chips on a fender is .5 hour billed.
Quality of material is a big factor. The paint maaco will use to paint your car is garbage. Even their "top quality" job is garbage paint. That's why they can sell you a 1k complete paint job. They spray it with cheap ass paint. It will oxidize , fade , peel in the sun usually within five years. Sometimes way less. The cost of the paint I use which is top of the line usually costs around 2-3k for enough to paint a whole car or truck. That's just the materials bill not the whole job bill. Our paint will last 20 years or more if cared for.
Last is the type of job. Painting just a hood can be masked off. Painting a door requires removing all of the window trim, handles, mirror, mouldings, ect. That takes time and adds to the cost. Modern bumpers have tons of parts , lights, grills ect. Takes a lot of time to take those apart. Taking shit apart gets you a way better paintjob than masking. Masking these things leaves hard paint edges and areas in the gaps that don't get sanded properly or have enough paint. These are fail points that will later peel or oxidize faster . To buttfuck mask a complete like a masco job takes an hour . To teardown a car for a complete like we do takes the bodyman 6-10 hours which you'll be paying labor rates for.
Last is labor rate. A collision shop has fucked the employees out of decent pay to get volume from insurance accounts. They will charge a 50 ish per hour labor rate and the employees will rush through your job as fast as possible. No fucks given about quality. You might get a fantastic job done or you might not. They won't go the extra mile. You won't get a proper clear half the time because the shop is screaming at the painters about material costs so they learn to skimp on materials to keep the corporation happy. Causes early failure pretty often. At a custom shop like mine labor rate is 100+ per hour. We didn't bend over for insurance companies for the last decade. Yes it's more expensive but your painter (me) is paid well and not on commission. I'm not rushing your job out the door or skimping on you clearcoat because you paid for the time and materials. I'll take the time to fix little extra things and make it perfect. I'll take the time to buff the panel to a better than factory appearance. Your paint will last as long as possible because I didn't cut any corners .
So that's about how car painting works guys. You get what you pay for like many other things.