Stains on a car seat are unattractive, whether they’re permanent from a darker coffee spill or just a basic water spill. You can feel ashamed every time you pick someone up in your car because of them, and they can lower the car’s resale value. Your car’s performance won’t be affected, but the way it looks will be drastically altered.
The good news is that most stains on vehicle seats can be removed, no matter how deeply embedded they are. The trick is finding the right combination of effort and tools to complete the job.
As experienced auto detailers, we’ve dealt with all kinds of unpleasant spills in vehicles. When it comes to cleaning car seats, here are the five best methods we’ve found so far. Find out what works best for you.
1-Start with a Homemade Solution
Everyone thinks that because it’s in your automobile and not your home, the carpeting and upholstery are different. However, that’s simply not the case. This means you can use something you’d use on your home’s upholstery and carpeting, such as a homemade peroxide and water solution. Peroxide is great for stains that have an organic base, such as blood or grass stains. You might want to look into vinegar, hot water, and dish soap for other stains. This combination will help you remove stains with grease or oil bases, as the dish soap will break up the grease while the other components will work the stain out.
Either solution might work for what you are working on. Just put the solution in a spray bottle, spray it onto the stain, and let it sit to work its magic. You can use a soft scrub brush to work the cleaner into the stain and a cloth to wipe everything up.
2-Steam Clean Upholstery Seats
Once everything has been vacuumed, you can opt to try the homemade solution and a spray bottle or go for the gusto using a steam cleaner. Don’t have a steam cleaner? You can rent one or call on the professionals such as AZ Carpet Cleaners to help. We have professional cleaning solutions for all types of upholsteries, including automotive seats. However, if you still insist on doing it yourself, you could also use the steam cleaner solution or laundry soap in a spray bottle with very hot water. Then spray the solution onto the car’s upholstery and scrub with a soft scrub brush, as you would do with your homemade solution. To get the water out, use a wet/dry vacuum, but if that’s not available, then put the windows down on a dry day in the sun.
3-Use Leather Cleaner and Conditioner
We’ve been mainly focused on upholstery, and you might be looking at your leather seats, which is not a problem. The homemade solutions are safe for leather as well. However, you might want to consider a leather cleaner instead of an upholstery cleaner for boughten products. These cleaners are designed to work with leather and not dry them out. Once you have cleaned the leather and gotten the stain out, be sure to follow up with some leather conditioner to help protect it from future stains.
4-Freezing Stubborn Things Stuck onto Your Leather Or Rubbing Alcohol
With leather, you have a few other options to try if you have a stain that simply won’t budge. You can try freezing off anything that is sticky to get the sticky to freeze in order to get the material removed. This works well for substances such as gum.
Alternatively, if you have a permanent marker or ink on your leather seats, you might want to try rubbing alcohol, which will remove the marks like magic. It would be best if you started in a small area that isn’t noticeable to ensure that it won’t take the seat coloring off, but this is very effective on leather as well as the plastic trim inside.
5-Call the Professionals
Cleaning the leather and upholstery of your vehicle isn’t any different than cleaning your furniture. It’s just in a tighter area. If you need further help bringing your vehicle’s seats and carpeting back to life, you can count on AZ Carpet Cleaning to help. We offer professional carpet cleaning services for both your home and your vehicle. Call 480-689-3509 today to find out more.
