How to Make the Fabric in Your Car Look Brand New

If you’re seeking out helpful hints to clean seats in your car, then you’ve come to the right place. There is no right or wrong in how to clean car seats, but you do want to find the most effective methods for getting the job done because this is a task you probably don’t want to spend the entire day working on.

But you do want to preserve the fabric of your vehicle’s interior. Remember when you drove your new car off the lot, how proud you were of the way it looked and smelled. Now that you’ve owned it for a few months or a few years that look and smell may have faded, it doesn’t mean you can’t restore the upholstery back to the way it appeared the day you bought it.

So, we’re going to give you some ideas as to how you can go about doing just that. You may already have some of these in your cleaning arsenal, others might be new to you, but we can assure they all work in their capability to make the inside of your car look brand new all over again:

Baking Soda

This is one of the most useful cleaning tricks ever, whether you’re trying to spruce up the appearance of carpeting in the home or upholstery in your vehicle. Simply put, this stuff is like some kind of miracle cleanser even if it’s better known for use in making cookies and cupcakes.

Baking soda is particularly ideal for stain removal and if you are bothered by something spilled that you never completely cleaned up, you can mix a ¼ cup of this white stuff with a full cup of warm water. Apply a small amount of the mixture to the affected area and scrub at it with a toothbrush. For those deep-seated stains, you may want to leave the mixture on the stain for about a half hour before you get the toothbrush involved.

Using A Toothbrush

Speaking of getting the toothbrush involved in the clean-up of your vehicle interior, this is one of the most useful tools you can bring to your interior detailing. The long handle allows you to get into those hard to reach areas while the bristles are perfect for brushing, scrubbing, and lifting away grime and dirt from the surface of any fabric as well as the dashboard.

Vacuuming

You can’t overemphasize how impactful a good vacuum can be for cleaning the fabric of your vehicle. Vacuuming is an absolute must for really making a difference in the look and feel of your car’s upholstery. This way you can lift up any particulate or contaminants that could end up damaging the fabric further by spreading grease and dirt and possibly even creating further stains you really would rather avoid instead.

When you clear away the surface level soil, you are reducing the potential for driving stains into the fabric through wet absorption that might be present. So, vacuum first, then clean, and then vacuum again to clear out any remaining remnants of your cleansing process.

Reduce the Moisture

For particularly bad stains and messes, most of us will feel the instinct to inundate the affected area with water to get the job done right. But this is the wrong idea, you do not want to introduce elevated levels of moisture to your fabric because you could end up doing more harm than good when all is said and done.

That’s because too much moisture can end up leaving your car seats damp and smelling musty. If you really overdo it and the upholstery never quite gets dry, you could be inviting the growth of mildew which can be even tougher to fully eliminate than an average, everyday stain.

Freeze Out the Sticky Stuff

We’ve seen all kinds of spills and messes in vehicles, but some of the worst are things like gum, sticky candy, even syrup, crayon markings, and children’s toys like Play-doh or silly slime. If you’re a parent, then you already know the pain and difficulty of attempting to remove these things from your car upholstery. You may have a mess in there right now that you’re having a tough time removing.

Say no more, grab some ice in a plastic bag and freeze the substance. After it hardens, chip and scrape at it with a knife or some other hard, flat edge until all of the mess is gone. Once you’re finished, you can grab that vacuum to clear away what’s been left behind to make your fabric look like nothing ever happened.