How to Clean Car Upholstery:
The TLDR (Too long, didn't read) and the Deep Dive

TLDR:

As an experienced professional detailer, I'm here to share my expert tips on how to clean your car's upholstery like a pro! You don't need fancy equipment, just a few basic supplies: a shop vac, a scrub brush, upholstery shampoo, and microfiber cloths.

Whether you choose a concentrated upholstery cleaner that you dilute yourself or a ready-to-use option, the cleaning process is pretty straightforward.

• Start by vacuuming thoroughly to remove loose dirt and debris.
• Spray your chosen cleaner on the area, making sure not to oversaturate it.
• Scrub the area with your brush to loosen the dirt and then wipe it clean with a microfiber cloth.
• You may need to repeat these steps a few times, especially on heavily soiled areas.

Remember, light, repeated applications of cleaner work better than soaking the fabric. Also, some materials, like tightly woven fabrics with a short nap, are more difficult to clean than others.

Don't forget to check out my other pages for tips on cleaning leather, vinyl, and plastic. With a little effort, you can have your car's interior looking its best!

Deep Dive: How to clean car upholstery

Welcome to the Internet, where everyone has a voice!

If you search for car upholstery cleaning tips, you’ll usually find quick, oversimplified advice from non-professionals.

Fortunately, you've come to an experienced pro who can show you the right products, tools, and techniques to keep things straightforward while delivering results better than you might expect!

I promise not to overwhelm you with products and tools! 

I will show you how to get the best bang for your buck and how to get maximum results with the least amount of "stuff".

• Vacuum (I definitely recommend a dedicated detailing vacuum)
• Scrub brush
• Upholstery shampoo
• Microfiber cloths

What I will tell you is that regardless of how you define car upholstery, you will always be required to clean a variety of materials.

Even if all you are interested in cleaning is your car seat, you will find that this one component in your vehicle will be a combination of materials.

This is not a problem since a quality upholstery cleaner can actually clean everything inside of any vehicle.

Car Upholstery Cleaner

Let's start with a professional grade cleaner that is also very economical. (If you want to keep it even simpler than what I am about to tell you, you can scroll down and find a ready-to-use upholstery cleaner below)

You're gonna need a cleaner of some kind and this product below is actually the only cleaner you will need to clean everything inside your car's interior.

The industry will tell you differently, but I am telling you what I have used to detail hundreds of cars as a professional.

Chemical Guy's Fabric Clean on Amazon

• One product; endless cleaning capabilities
• Produces professional results
• Concentrate formulation (blend to 20:1 for basic upholstery cleaning)
• Will work on all materials: fabric, cloth, carpeting, leather, vinyl, rubber, etc. (yes, I actually use this to clean car leather)
• No rinsing necessary (no, this will not "attract" dirt after-the-fact)

Yes, this is what is called a dedicated upholstery cleaner, but it is a cleaner that is not limited to cleaning just fabrics, but can be used to also clean any of the hard materials of the interiors:

• Hard plastics (think door panels, door threshold plates, dashboard, etc.)
• Car leather (the industry doesn't tell you but car leather actually has a clear protective layer as the top coat. You aren't actually touching the natural leather, but a clear synthetic top coat which is why this product is also very safe and effective to clean car leather) 

Because this product is a concentrate, you will need some quality sprayers to mix your cleaning solution into. 

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Car Upholstery Cleaning Tools

Spray Bottles and Spray Heads on Amazon

• Professional spray bottles
• The most ergonomically friendly sprayer heads I have ever used
• Use for any of your car care products
  

Upholstery Scrub Brush Set on Amazon

• The perfect Duo: one stiff and one soft scrub brush
• Yes, the brand name is a bit confusing but these are ideal for any car upholstery cleaning jobs
• Use the stiff brush for heavy duty cleaning on more durable materials: carpeting, floor mats, etc.
• Use the soft brush for what you would consider more delicate materials: leather, velour, headliner, etc.

Kirkland Microfiber Cloths on Amazon

• My "go-to" auto detailing cloths for both interior and exterior detailing tasks
  
• Highly absorbent (much better than the traditional 100% cotton cloths)
• Lint free (cotton cloths will leave lots of lint)

Ridgid 5 hp Detail Vacuum on Amazon

• My personal and professional favorite for over 10 years
• The winning balance of size, power, and versatility

How to Clean Anything Inside Your vehicle

Now that you know the tools, let's map out the steps of cleaning.

If you examine the interior of your vehicle you will come to realize that all material can be separated into (2) fundamental categories:

1. Hard Surfaces: plastics, vinyl, leather
2. Porous materials: carpeting, velour, fabric

There's not a whole lot of difference in the steps of cleaning, but they are as follows:

Hard Surfaces:

• Wipe/dust off any excessive amounts of dry dust/dirt: dust, food crumbs, misc. debris.
• Spray cleaner directly onto surface material to be cleaned.
• Scrub material
• Mop up dirty cleaning solution with microfiber cloth
• Check results
• Repeat as needed

Porous materials:

• Vacuum first to remove as much dry dirt/debris as possible before wetting with any cleaner (when dealing with excessive dirt I recommend you scrub the area while it remains dry, and then vacuum up as much of the dry dirt as possible before spraying the area with your cleaner)
• Spray area with cleaner (don't over-saturate: just a few sprays of cleaner to a workable area)
• Scrub material with your chosen scrub brush too break up dirt
• Use your microfiber cloth to mop area up (you will see the dirt transfer directly to your cloth from the material you are cleaning)
• Check results
• Repeat as many times as needed to produce desired results (on heavily soiled materials this may require 3-7 applications)

Darren's Tips: You may have come here with the expectation that you need some type of carpet extractor machine to really be effective. This simply is not true no matter how dirty your vehicle is.

The dirtier the material is (let's think of your floor mats as an example) the more I recommend you spend time on the pre-vacuuming part. You can greatly enhance this first stage by also using the scrub brush to break-up the loose fibers, thus releasing additional dirt so you can vacuum up much more than you realize before introducing any liquid cleaner.

It is normal and common for me to repeat these steps anywhere from 3-7 times per area to achieve my desired results.

Having a carpet extraction machine for the carpeting, floor mats, and cloth seating is certainly nice, but using these machines represent so much additional work with set-up, break-down, and are also limited by the size of the extraction head.

If you were to take the time and money to buy one, you would quickly realize the limitations of being able to only use the extraction head on the flat open areas of your vehicle...which you will quickly realize how many of the areas of your car are not flat, open areas.

Additional Tips of Cleaning Car Upholstery 

• Light, repeated applications are always better than a heavy, over-saturation of cleaning.
• Not all carpeting or upholstery is created equal; the tighter the weave, the more difficult it will be to clean. Some materials used on seating surfaces will never come completely clean if they are a very tight weave and have become excessively dirty.
• A tight weave means there is little to no nap. (nap is a term that defines the amount of fibers that stick up above the bottom material. Like carpeting that has individual fibers that stick up and can be sifted through with your fingers and can be brushed to create patterns.)
• Carpeting or upholstery with no nap, or a closed loop weave like Berber carpeting, is very difficult to clean. Some entry-level (cheaply priced and cheaply made) cars have what is more like felt as carpeting than traditional carpeting; this type of "carpeting" is very difficult to not only vacuum, but shampoo. Due to the lack of separate fibers that stick up individually (like traditional carpeting), debris and dirt will embed and get stuck within these fibers, making it difficult to remove.
• The best way to describe this in a simplified manner is like trying to clean your dirty hand in the open position, with all your fingers representing individual fibers (nap), versus having your hand held in a fist with your fingers tightly closed and the dirt stuck in-between your fingers.
• No upholstery shampoo or cleaner has the ability to clean every form of dirt, and numerous factors will determine your overall results; eg. how long has the dirt been allowed to remain there, what is the composition of dirt, what type of fabric/cloth are you cleaning, the cleaners you have chosen.
• I merely inform and show you what I use professionally to get professional grade results.
• I always, always use a fabric protector after every shampooing/cleaning I do when it comes to cloth or fabrics of every kind.

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How To Clean Car Upholstery with a
Ready to Use (RTU) Car Upholstery Cleaner

There will be some of you that accept that you are not interested in getting an ecconomical upholstery shampoo due to very limited cleaning you think you will be doing.

If you are such a person there are ready-to-use upholstery cleaners that offer the same versatility, but are a simpler choice since they come in their own sprayer and are ready to use thus requiring no custom blending on your part.

Chemical Guy's ALL-Clean on Amazon

• For the car enthusiast or driveway detailer looking for the convenience of a ready-to-use car interior cleaner.
• Safe for use on all interior materials.
• Carpeting, velour, leather, vinyl, rubber.
• No sticky residue; no rinsing necessary.

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Next Level Interior Cleaning and Detailing

Once you have mastered the basic task of vacuuming and shampooing, you may want to add some additional tools to your arsenal.

Detail Vent Brush Set on Amazon

• A must have for dusting your dash vents and other intricate components
• I reserve one specifically for "wet work" when using with cleaning solution.
  
• Use on vents, cup holders, or any intricate parts of the cars interior.

How to Clean Car Upholstery: Steps for professional results

Cleaning and Conditioning Plastic, Vinyl, and Leather

Within every part of the car detailing and cleaning process, the ripple effect is always at play.

Meaning this; cleaning the fabric and carpeting areas of your car is one thing, but the very next question for most people will be "How to clean the vinyl, leather, and plastic within my car.

For this reason I have added these extra links for dedicated pages for these specific questions.

Cleaning Car Leather and Vinyl

Auto Upholstery Protector

Car Interior Dressing

Additional Tips to Cleaning Car Upholstery

Cleaning and shampooing the carpeting/floor mats in your car will be easier than the actual seats in your car.

As a rule, most cars contain actual carpeting with individual fibers that are used to cover the floors and used as floor mats in cars.

In contrast, car manufacturers use many different types of materials and textures to create the seating surfaces within cars of today. These seating surfaces will prove to be much more difficult if you car has been made using these modern, tightly woven, synthetic materials. These seats may look cool, but trying to get them clean can be especially frustrating.

It is important to know that any professional detailer with any amount of experience will confirm this.

Some seating materials are simply unable to be cleaned back to original condition due to the way in which they are made and the materials being used to construct these new interiors.

Seat belts are one such example and represent a problem for any professional detailer.

Below are a few examples based on the type of seating you may find in your car's interior. 

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Traditional Weave Car Seating Upholstery

This shot is taken from a Honda Civic and represents what I call "typical" cloth seating in a car; not overly thick, and not a specifically tight weave either."

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Medium Weave Car Seating Upholstery

"This picture is from a Toyota Highlander and represents what I call medium weave; tighter than the Honda from above with less nap or fibers protruding above the base material itself. This represents a harder proposition of cleaning with less individual fibers actually exposed to the cleaning process."

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Tight Weave Car Seating Upholstery

"This shot is taken from the infamous Jeep Wrangler. I say infamous as any professional detailer will tell you, these types of synthetic, tight woven seats are a nightmare to clean. My professional advice is to never let them get dirty in the first place. Repeated applications will be required to produce any significant results especially on this light colored material."

How to Clean Car Upholstery Conclusion

All I can say is that much time and effort went into this page with the hopes of teaching you how to clean car upholstery yourself, on your own car, right at home.

I hope I have laid out enough information for you to get the kind of results I get in my professional world. Don't forget to pass this page along to any of your friends who might benefit from all the info on this how to clean car upholstery page.

Sincerely,

Darren Priest

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