Cleaning car seats: This is how the seat upholstery gets clean again

If you value a well-groomed vehicle interior, you cannot avoid cleaning the car seats. With a little time and the right tricks, you can achieve the best results. Here's how it works.

Regular car cleaning is generally recommended. Thorough cleaning of the interior is essential so that the vehicle not only shines from the outside but also from the inside. Because, as a study from Great Britain shows, there are more bacterial strains in the vehicle interior than in ordinary toilets. But what is the best way to clean the interior? Opinions differ, especially when it comes to car seats: do household products like shaving foam work, or should you rather use branded cleaners? The ADAC explains how to get the seats really clean again and what to look out for with leather seats.

Mucking out and vacuuming

First, the interior of the vehicle should be mucked out and vacuumed. So you have enough space for cleaning the seats and the coarse dirt disappears. Be careful with plastic and leather : the hard vacuum cleaner nozzle can leave unsightly scratches and marks on softer materials. A brush should therefore be used as a vacuum cleaner attachment for the seat upholstery.

With foam and wet vacuum cleaner

Then it's already down to business. For light dirt such as stains or odors, branded cleaners, a bucket of water and a microfiber cloth are all you need. Special upholstery foam products are recommended here. Slightly moisten soiled areas. Then rub the seat in the appropriate areas with foam and allow it to take effect. Then wipe off the dirt with a clean and damp microfiber cloth.

If the dirt is deeper and more stubborn, intensive car seat cleaning with a wet vacuum cleaner is a good idea.

Here, the cleaning agent is filled with water in a specified mixing ratio in a separate container attached to the vacuum cleaner. In principle, wet vacuum cleaners work in a similar way to conventional vacuum cleaners, but have a smaller attachment. In front of this is a small nozzle that applies the water - cleaning agent mixture to the fabric of the seat upholstery. It is then sucked up by the vacuum cleaner and caught in an extra container. If you empty this, you realize that a lot of dirt can get stuck in the car seats.

Attention : Since a lot of water settles in the seats with such an upholstery cleaning, cleaning with the wet vacuum cleaner should definitely be carried out on warm days , preferably in summer. The seats have to dry over a longer period of time. If possible in a place where you can leave your vehicle in the sun with the windows or doors open.

Treat leather seats with particular care

Leather is chic, and it needs special care to keep it looking good over the long term. During cleaning, oils and fats are removed from the leather, which are important for its robustness and durability. Leather seats should therefore be treated with special leather care products after cleaning.

Leather seats are particularly stressed in summer, as you sweat more and heat and UV radiation put a strain on the material. Manufacturers often make the leather more breathable by making it "more porous". When using cleaning and care pastes, you should therefore be careful not to "fill up" the holes. Instead, a cleaning or care foam on.

You also need a vacuum cleaner (important: with a brush attachment), fresh microfiber cloths , a bucket of lukewarm water , a leather cleaner and a shoe brush with soft bristles to clean the leather seat.

Cleaning seats with shaving foam?

Household products such as shaving cream are generally not recommended . The risk of damaging the seats is greater than the benefit. Household products are not recommended, especially for leather seats that need to be cleaned very carefully. After all, nobody wants unsightly stains as residues on their fancy seats.

ADAC tip: Clean the windows afterwards

At the very end, it makes sense to clean the windows from the inside. When cleaning the interior, cleaning agent can get on the windows again and again and leave streaks.

So grab a kitchen towel or a clean microfiber cloth and polish with a standard household window cleaning agent. In the end, the panes should be free of streaks and clean, because they fog up more quickly when they are dirty. This gives you full perspective again – and you have done something for road safety.

Current study: So many bacteria cavort in the vehicle interior