Autocar product test: What is the best interior trim cleaner?
It’s really important to choose a good cleaning product for the inside of your car, but it’s often something people overlook. The outside hopefully gets regularly cleaned and looked after, yet dust and fingerprints and odours can easily build up on the inside.
We’re looking at the best car interior trim cleaners available. For testing, it was important the products were easy to use, cost-effective and versatile – you don’t want to be grabbing 10 different bottles every time you need to give the inside a spruce. We also ranked these products based on restoring natural finish, instead of the slightly old-school mega-sparkle.
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BEST BUY: AutoGlym Interior Shampoo
Price: £8.15
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
AutoGlym’s Interior Shampoo is an excellent, versatile product that’s great value for money. It can be used to tackle heavier dirt and stains, or just used to lightly freshen up your interior. Spray it directly onto surfaces, give it a massage around with a microfibre and wipe it off with a clean cloth. If you’re wanting to tackle tougher spot stains on seats, you can use an interior brush. It’s suitable for all car interior trims, including cloth and leather seats, dashboards, steering wheels and seatbelts. We were also really pleased with the pleasant smell it left behind.
Autocar says: 5 stars
RECOMMENDED: Dodo Juice Total Wipe Out
Price: £10.00
What’s included: 1000ml
Buy from: Amazon
Total Wipe Out is great value for money, giving you a whopping 1000ml to play with. If desired, you can dilute the product even further. Use it on every surface, inside and out, hard and soft. That makes it really versatile. It removed all greasy marks, and didn’t leave any sticky residue behind, or any smears on glass. Everything was left clean and matt. It has a fresh fragrance that doesn’t smell overwhelmingly chemical or harsh, and it restored that new car smell.
Autocar says: 5 stars
Others to consider
Gyeon Q²M InteriorDetailer (+ Q²M PolishWipe)
Price: £14.00
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
After you’ve cleaned your car, the last thing you want is to be blasted with fragrance every time you sit inside. Fortunately, Gyeon’s InteriorDetailer has a fresh and clean scent that doesn’t stray into overpowering air freshener territory. It left a matt finish that was streak and smudge-free, it was effective on lots of different materials and finishes, and it made light work of the many fingerprints all over the piano black trim in our car.
Autocar says: 4.5 stars
CarPlan No.1 Super Valet
Price: £8.99
What’s included: 600ml
Buy from: Amazon
No.1 Super Valet can be used on all hard surfaces in your car, including plastic trims, rubber, metals and dashboards. The smell reminded us of clean laundry, which is always pleasant. CarPlan recommends applying this product to a microfibre cloth before wiping across surfaces. We found it kept the surfaces looking exactly how they should: glossy finishes remained glossy, while matt surfaces stayed that way.
Autocar says: 4.5 stars
Turtle Wax Hybrid Solutions Streak-Free Mist Interior Detailer
Price: £15.00
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
This can be used on all plastic, vinyl, rubber, glass and leather, so it’s nice and versatile, although it is the most expensive product we tested. You can use the Flairosol trigger to disperse the product in short bursts, or long ones and cover a larger area more quickly. Turtle Wax suggests you massage the product into surfaces to remove all traces of dust, continue until it’s been absorbed, then wipe away any excess. Our car was left very clean, and smelling fresh.
Autocar says: 4 stars
Sonax Xtreme Interior Cleaner
Price: £8.59
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
Whether you want to tackle tougher stains, or give your car’s interior a quick spruce up, this is a good-value product. It can be used on all sorts of surfaces, and didn’t change the colour of seat fabric where we’d used it on a small patch. Do note that Sonax recommends applying it over entire surfaces to avoid colour and brightness differences, though. It did a great job on our roof lining, and got rid of odours and muddy paw prints from a dog we’d had sat in the car.
Autocar says: 4 stars
Liqui Moly Auto Interior Cleaner
Price: £7.33
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
Liqui Moly’s Auto Interior Cleaner can be used on all plastics, fabric and trims in your car. While using, you’ll need to give it a few minutes to take effect, but don’t let it dry out. Liqui Moly suggests you spray directly onto surfaces, then wipe with a damp sponge or cloth, although we found it better when we applied it with a cloth so we could control the amount of product used. The scent isn’t particularly long lasting, but smells like apples, and we were left with a lightly polished and streak-free finish.
Autocar says: 4 stars
Car Gods Interior Detailer
Price: £10.99
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
After cleaning our interior with Car Gods’ Interior Detailer, we were left with a pleasant apple smell, which wasn’t too overwhelming. The product also comes with a 2-in-1 vent cleaner and hard brush, which will help you get to those hard-to-reach places. That makes it good value for money, even if the price of the product is more expensive than some others tested. It can be used on all hard surfaces in your car, including metal and wood, but not fabric or leather.
Autocar says: 4 stars
GTechniq W2 Multi Purpose Cleaner
Price: £8.50
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
You can use GTechniq’s W2 cleaner to tackle everything in your car, apart from leather, which may mean you need more than one product. You can either use it neat for some seriously powerful cleaning, or diluted when you’d just like a quick spruce. It worked well for us, removing dust and fingerprints, and working wonders on a rogue ketchup stain we’d acquired on a fabric seat (no judgement please). It’s easy to apply: spray on, leave for a few minutes, then rinse off.
Autocar says: 4 stars
Turtle Wax Dash and Glass
Price: £6.29
What’s included: 500ml
Buy from: Amazon
Turtle Wax’s Dash and Glass left all our interior plastics with no greasy feel and a lovely matt finish. The glass was also streak-free, and everything had a pleasant, fresh and clean fragrance. Honestly, it smells better than most car air fresheners, and we could still smell it a week or so after cleaning. You can use this on all hard surfaces in your car, but not fabric or leather.
Autocar says: 4 stars
Rachael Hogg
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