On brand new bumpers the prep isn't as intense because you don't have 15 years of sun warpage and armour all/tire shine to try and get rid of. I believe a flex agent is added to the paint. I didn't actually paint them myself - I had Quality Collision in forest Park do them. I could call hem and ask them exactly how they did it.

The bumpers were painted like this from the factory so they were intended to be painted like this. Some body shops really shy away from painting them because they're afraid of chipping - some will even say "you can't paint those" even when it's the exact same part number as the ones that Honda painted themselves when the cars were new.

For my old bumpers I planned on having a buddy that does body work (in his spare time) try to refurbish these by filling in all the knicks, but the texture will be lost in doing so. The factory texture is almost like a basketball, but you can't really fix dug-in spots without making them smooth.

I wanted these to look OE with the texture and all.