Interior Detailing Strategy for Faster Cleaning

Interior Detailing can be the most time-consuming thing! Everywhere you look there’s one more crumb or speck that could be vacuumed, and once you clean one area, the surrounding area now has crumbs around it. How do we detail our interiors faster and more efficiently?

It’s as simple as top to bottom, back to front. This is how we clean faster and more effectively at the same time.

First off I highly recommend using an air compressor. Preferably having a Tornador as well, but even a standard air compressor gun works great. Secondly, you’ll need a shop vac that can take on lots of water like our Craftsman 20 gallon or a carpet/upholstery extractor machine. From here you’ll need a drill brush attachment and some Super Clean Degreasing soap, some towels, and some boar’s hair brushes. Not necessary for at-home use, but a steam cleaner is very helpful! You can pick up a small one from Walmart for about $20.

1. Use a Tornador or air compressor gun to clean the headliner and crevices of window sills and door cup holders, pockets, and front dashboard.

Tornador

2. Use boar hair brushes with degreasing soap to clean the gunk out of the crevices in door cup holders and pockets.

3. Vacuum the interior and remove pet hair, sand, and contaminants. Useful to use a lilly brush, Tornador, and the drill brush to remove sand and pet hair faster. We recommend blowing out the crevices of the seats and the rails below. Also, remember to vacuum up any dirt or trash that fell out of the vehicle! You don’t want to leave a driveway or garage dirtier than when you started.

4. Systematically shampoo the trunk first, then seats shampooing the top half of the seat first, then the bottom then proceeding with the carpets after. Shampooing consists of spraying with degreaser soap and agitating the fabric or leather with a drill brush for upholstery. Use a soft boar’s hair brush for leather, and wipe it clean with a microfiber towel. After this, extract the grease from the seats with your vacuum or extractor. We recommend doing this process twice to remove as much staining as possible, but be sure to run an air mover or leafblower inside for about 30 minutes after all cleaning is done to dry the seat and carpets to prevent mold growth.

• One note on the trunk area. Often, the trunk is a thinner fabric, so it’s better to shampoo only once and then steam clean or only use an extractor to avoid oversaturating the fabric.

Shampooing seats: Degrease, agitate, and extract with shop vac or extractor

5. Steam clean the seats and carpets with a towel over the steam head. Please note, avoid steam cleaning leather directly and only heat up the towel to wipe away leftover dirt with a degreasing soap. If you steam clean leather too aggressively, you risk damaging the leather. Also, if you’re using an extractor with a heating element as listed above, you might not need to use the steam cleaner for upholstery and carpets, but it’s still useful to have one for cleaning gunk and sticky things in hard-to-reach areas.

6. You can now protect the doors and leather with conditioner and UV protectants or leave it as be for a natural look.

7. Be sure to clean the windows at the end! Use 2 towels, one for cleaning, and one for making it streak-free. We recommend using surgical huck towels for the first cleaning and then using spray the window again using microfiber for a streak-free shine. Remember to fold the towel into fours to use the towel more efficiently.

Surgical Huck Towel

Microfiber towel

8. That’s it! You’re done, the usual time to complete is about 2.5-4 hours depending on condition and size.

This is the basic overview of how to get interiors done faster! Top to bottom, front to back! Let me know if you have any other tricks or tips to get it done even faster/more efficiently!