Introduction

When it comes to cleaning your car, it’s objectively true that cleaning the outside is more fun. Spraying the hose and throwing soap suds on the car on a hot Summer’s day is a great time. Cleaning the inside isn’t nearly as fun, but it’s even more important. After all, you tend to spend more time inside your car than hanging around outside of it.

There’s a lot to know about cleaning the inside of your car, but in this article we’re going to exclusively focus on the best way to clean the seats in a car, an important, but often overlooked step of car cleaning.

There is a lot to know and a lot we’re going to cover, so if you’d like to jump to any section in the article, you can use the following links:

If you’d like to just jump in and learn the best way to clean the seats in your car, then keep reading into the next section.

Best Way to Clean Seats in Your Car

Regularly cleaning seats in your car is important to keep them clean and smelling good. Below we’ll walk through a quick and easy, 5 step process and once you get the hang of it, cleaning your seats will become quick and easy and you may not even mind doing it every 2 weeks.

And best of all, the process only takes 20-25 minutes and half of that time is spent letting the seats dry. As soon as you start, you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll be finished.

Time needed: 25 minutes

The best way to clean the seats in your car is an easy 5 step process that only takes roughly 25 minutes. You should have a vacuum, cleaning solution, scrubbing brush, and micro-fiber cloth to get started. If you have a wet vacuum, even better. Let’s jump into Step 1.

Vacuum loose material
Before you start with the cleaning solution, make sure to vacuum any loose material, dust, or crumbs off your seats. You want your seats clean of any loose dirt before spraying the cleaning solution because you want the cleaning solution to thoroughly coat the car seat and not the Cheerio dust sitting on top of it.
Spray cleaning solution
Once you’ve vacuumed thoroughly, spray the cleaning solution on the seats. For leather seats, spray enough to thoroughly wipe it down. For cloth seats, make sure the area is damp to the touch, but not completely soaked. After all, you want this cleaning solution to be removed after a period of time.
Scrub the seats with a brush
Scrubbing the cleaning solution into the seats will work the dirt out and make it easier to ultimately remove. For particularly dirty seats or stains, you can get a scrubbing brush with harder bristles that can get deeper into the dirt to remove it. This is most effective for cloth seats. For leather seats, you don’t want to scrub too hard to avoid scratching the leather.
Dry the seats
After you’ve sprayed the cleaning solution and scrubbed the dirt out, dry the seats with a micro-fiber cloth thoroughly and let the seats air dry by leaving the car doors open and preferably out of your garage. You want to make sure that the cleaning solution is fully removed and the seats are dry.
Vacuum
Vacuum your seats one last time to make sure there is no remaining cleaning solution flakes, dirt, or grime left on your seats. If you have a wet vacuum, you can use that instead of waiting for the seats to dry. That is a great way to completely remove the dirt and the moisture from the cleaning solution at the same time.
If necessary, repeat steps 2 – 4
If you have a particularly difficult stain and after you vacuum for a second time the stain remains, then repeat steps 2 through 4 until the stain is completely removed. You can also use more cleaning solution and scrub the seats more vigorously to thoroughly remove the dirt.

If it seems easy and straightforward that’s because it is easy and straightforward. There’s no secret formula when it comes to cleaning your seats. Just following the process outlined above on a regular basis is the most effective way to keep your seats clean and free of stains.

The next step we’ll talk about is choosing the right cleaning solution. There are a lot of cleaning solutions out there and we’ll discuss those options now. You also might have a cleaning solution in your pantry and if you do you can skip this section and jump right into the importance of micro-fiber cloths for cleaning car seats.

Choose the Right Cleaning Solution

When choosing a product to clean the seats of your car, it’s important to pick the right one. And that right choice depends on your type of seat, which is most likely leather or cloth.

We’ll also discuss how to clean your seats with baking soda if you’d like to avoid potentially harmful cleaning chemicals in your home.

For now, let’s talk about the best cleaning solution for leather seats.

Cleaning Leather Car Seats

If you have leather seats, you’ll want to use a cleaning solution that was made specifically for leather. Any regular cleaning solution can easily cause the leather to lighten, darken, or become stained. That is why there are specific cleaners made for leather and they’re readily available.

You can find leather cleaning solutions at Amazon, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, or any other big box store. The following are available on Amazon and have quite a few positive reviews each:

One type of leather cleaning solution isn’t necessarily better than the others, but we recommend looking for a cleaning solution that is appropriate for your seats.

If the cleaning solution indicates it’s most effective on lighter leather, then go with that one. If you have darker leather seats and there’s a product that caters to darker seats, you’ll want to use the one made specifically for darker leather. After all, you want your seats to look better after cleaning than before, so it’s important to pick the right leather cleaning product.

One other thing to remember and was mentioned earlier, you want to be careful when cleaning leather seats, especially when it comes to scrubbing. This will be discussed further down in the article, but make sure to use a micro-fiber cloth when wiping down the leather seats. This will help you avoid any scratching.

Cleaning Cloth Car Seats

If you have cloth seats in your car, you don’t want to use a leather cleaning solution. First of all, leather cleaning solutions are generally more expensive and more importantly, they’re made for leather, not cloth.

A leather cleaning solution can stain and leave marks that you won’t appreciate. Instead, there are cleaning solutions specifically created for cloth seats.

The type of cleaner will be very similar to any carpet or couch cleaner you can find at Target, Walmart, or Amazon. This is because it’s essentially the same material as your carpet or couch.

The following cleaning products are available on Amazon, have wonderful reviews, are inexpensive and should last a long time:

All 3 of those products are designed for use on cloth car seat interiors, all are less than $20 and each of them has a plethora of positive reviews and nearly 5 star ratings.

One other option to consider is if you already have a carpet or cloth cleaner in your home, you might be able to use that as well. Just read the instructions and see if it was made for the cloth material that your seats are made from. Chances are you can use it, so better to check your pantry for a cleaning solution before making an unnecessary trip to the store.

Homemade Cleaning Solution for Car Seats

If you’re not a fan of the chemicals in most cleaning solutions, you can make your own cleaning solution at home to clean your car seats with baking soda.

We’re a big fan of baking soda and vinegar as a homemade, non-toxic cleaning solution because of it’s safety and effectiveness. We’ve actually written about it quite a few times:

Baking soda is great for cleaning cloth seats. If you want to use baking soda to clean your car seats, sprinkle baking soda all over the seats and scrub it in thoroughly.

Then leave the baking soda on the seat for 20-30 minutes and come back and vacuum it all up. Baking soda is very effective at removing odors and depending on the stain, it can help lift those out of cloth as well.

Baking soda is another great option for cleaning your car seats as it is both effective and non-toxic.

Importance of a Micro Fiber Cloth

Using a micro fiber cloth when cleaning your car seats is very important because it prevents scratches that can become exaggerated by regular cleaning. A micro fiber cloth was built and designed to prevent scratching on sensitive materials like leather, plastic, and more.

Whereas you may think a regular towel or cloth is soft to the touch, it’s actually fairly coarse and rough and can cause micro scratches on materials like leather. It may not seem obvious at first or even visible, but repeated, regular cleaning can exacerbate those micro scratches and cause them to become more pronounced.

That’s why nearly all cleaning professionals recommend micro fiber cloths for cleaning your car, both the inside and out. A micro fiber cloth is aptly named because it’s smooth on a smaller level and won’t scratch material like leather or even the outside of your car.

Those tiny scratches may not seem like much, but they can add up over time and you may start to wonder where they came from. It’s very likely the towels you’re using to dry and clean your car.

Micro fiber cloths are readily available at any big box store like Target or Home Depot and you can find them in the cleaning section. They’ve become more popular as an effective alternative to regular towels for cleaning.

Conclusion

Cleaning is a fairly polarizing topic because some people love it and others loathe it, but if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that your car should remain clean for you and any guests that you drive around. Keeping the outside clean is important, but more importantly, no one wants to sit on a dirty seat, no matter how polite they may be in your car.

That’s why in this article we talked through the best way to clean your car seats in a quick and effective 5 step process. As a recap, you want to vacuum your seats first, spray the cleaning solution thoroughly on the seats, scrub the cleaning solution into the seats to dislodge the dirt, then dry the seats with a micro-fiber cloth and air dry, and finally vacuum once again.

It’s really easy to keep your car seats clean and shouldn’t take more than 20-25 minutes each time. We also covered the most effective cleaning solutions for both cloth and leather seats, as well as a homemade cleaning solution of baking soda, which is great for those who want to avoid chemicals in their home.

Finally, we covered the importance of micro-fiber cloths, which are an absolute necessity if you do any regular cleaning of your car. Regular towels can cause scratches and minor damage that can grow over time. So we always recommend using micro-fiber towels for any cleaning.

We hope this article was helpful and showed you how easy it is to regularly clean your car seats. Soon you might even enjoy it!