Interior Care is as important, if not more important than your exterior. To state the obvious, you spend more time inside your vehicle and yourself and your passengers will take notice of your interiors cleanliness. We have a few suggestions on how to maintain your interior from your upholstery, leather, and vinyl/plastic trimmings – this will help prevent harmful UV rays that potentially can damage and fade your interior, but more importantly keep any bad odours out and your interior looking like new.
Interior Trim (eg. Dash, Door Trims etc)
Most modern vehicles, and even older will have the same type of interior trim. This is either a combination of plastic, rubber, vinyl, leather or even some with alcantara. Most interior products are multi-use which means in short that you don’t necessarily need a product for each type of finish. For interior our favourite go-to products are Nextzett Cockpit Premium and Nanolex Interior Cleaner – both these products gently clean your interior removing dust, sweat, oils and other contaminants from your trim whilst leaving a factory matte-like finish along with UV protection. For more serious cleaning such as removing sunscreen, finger prints from children and other stubborn stains we can recommend Nextzett Deep Plastic Cleaner or GYEON Trim Cleaner prior.
Carpets & Upholstery we suggest to regularly use a fabric cleaner such as Autobrite Fab or Nextzett Blitz to remove any surface stains. For a deep intensive clean to remove stubborn dirt, stains etc we would recommend you consider an interior shampoo with a machine (suggested annually). You can also protect these fabrics to prevent any staining and UV fading with GYEON Fabric Coat or Nanolex Leather & Textile Sealant.
Leather Cleansing & Protection
Did you know that transfer of dye from clothing, bodily oils (sweat etc), dirt and UV rays will cause your leather to deteriorate over time so we recommend to maintain your leather trim too avoid premature aging, cracking or damage.
As you know, there are variety of Leather finishes, how do you know what you have and how do you know what is suitable for your leather? A quick guide is that most European models have a real leather, most Australian and Asian make vehicles tend to have leatherette (meaning, synthetic or semi synthetic material). Thankfully you can use most leather products on both without concern, for the general cleanse & condition our favorites continue to be Duragloss Leather Shampoo & Duragloss Leather Conditioner – both containing subtle leather scent and leave your seats with a natural matte like finish once cleansed and conditioned. Quick and easy maintenance that anyone can do!
To take it a little further you can protect your leather which helps as fabrics to prevent leather from staining such as dirt, sweat and transfer of dye from clothing absorbing into the leather (common for lighter leathers especially). New or used cars we recommend using a cleaner which contains no conditioners such as GYEON Leather Cleaner Natural or Dodo Juice Supernatural Leather Cleaner followed with either GYEON or Dodo’s Leather Protection. This is simply applied with a foam or microfibre applicator and will help prevent UV damage and staining as mentioned. For more intensive cleaning on older vehicles including classics we would recommend the Leatherique System – this is a deep intensive clean and will help soften older leather.
Interior Glass
Visibility is the most important part for any driver. Body oils, sweat, dust, finger prints, dirt and moisture cause your windscreen & glass to become quite dirty and often fog up in colder months
Cleaning glass is quite easy, providing you know the method! You will need a normal Microfibre Cloth and a Glass specific microfibre cloth. Note that they do differ as the glass cloth is lint free and has a different weave/pattern. Get your favourite glass cleaner such as GYEON Glass Cleaner or Duragloss Glass Cleaner (our 2 favourites).
Next, take your Microfibre Cloth with the Glass Cleaner. Spray onto the cloth or glass and give the glass a thorough clean to remove any sweat, smoke residue, dust or dirt from your glass. Follow with the Microfibre Glass Cloth with NO product to clean your glass again with a firm clean. This will remove any residue product and leave your glass with a streak-free invisible finish.
Final words, try to keep your vehicle clean of rubbish and any used clothing especially from the gym or sports. This will avoid any odours from absorbing into your upholstery or leather! Don’t forget to vacuum and give your floor mats a good shake out to remove any dirt, dust, and debris that is embedded into the fibres on a regular basis.
