What causes your paintwork to fade?? There are multiple possibilities of why your paintwork is fading and losing its lustre. The most common of these is oxidation as a result of unprotected paint being exposed to sunlight. The 2nd biggest causes is scratch build up on the paintwork as we can see on this CX-9. Paint correction is a great way to clean up these issues before they accumulate and begin to cause irreversible damage like cracking paint.