When you look inside your vintage car, chances are it doesn’t look as good as it did the day you bought it. It is not uncommon for the interior to become dirty over the years with normal use. Learning how to clean upholstery yourself isn’t that difficult and can save you some money.

These upholstery cleaning tips are for fabric interiors only and not leather. We use shampoo to clean the inside of the cloth. We have options when it comes to the cleaning solution we use. You can buy super clean or purple degreaser at any local auto parts house. This works great on carpet and cloth seats to remove stains. You can also use Dawn dishwashing liquid, which we all know is great for fighting grease. Find a five gallon bucket or anything that will hold two to three gallons of water. Fill the bucket with water and add just a little bit of the cleaner, if using a purple cleaner just add a few capfuls until the water changes color slightly. With dish soap, maybe a tablespoon or so. We don’t want a lot of foam and soap we have to get out of the fabric. It’s always a good idea to test a small spot in an inconspicuous area before you start. Just use a white cloth and dampen with cleaner and rub a bit to see if the color is rubbing off on your towel. If so, stop now and call a professional for advice on cleaning up this type of material.

The items needed to wash your car’s interior yourself are a wet/dry vacuum, a scrub brush, and a few towels. Clean small areas at a time for best results, except for the seats, wet the entire seat to ensure there are no streaks. Then you can work on smaller areas of the seat after it’s all wet with shampoo. Use a hand towel to dampen it with shampoo, then gently scrub with a brush and vacuum very well to remove as much water as possible. You can re-wet the damaged areas and vacuum them until you don’t see any more dirt coming out. When you’ve vacuumed it up as well as possible, use a dry towel to scrub the entire seat, which removes more dirt and more water to help dry times. We do the same process with each seat and the mat.

Drying the interior as quickly as possible is essential when you have finished shampooing. If it doesn’t dry in a reasonable amount of time, it will mildew, similar to leaving wet clothes in the washing machine for too long. If it’s sunny, leave the windows open and make sure the car is in the sun. Place a fan in a car window to keep air moving and speed up drying time. If it’s not sunny you can roll down the windows to about 2 inches and turn the heat on full. If you have a small fan that oscillates, place it in the car where you can so it stays secure, and turn it on high. Don’t leave it unattended for too long, and keep checking the carpet and seats to see if they’re dry. If you have a garage where you can leave the windows open all night and a fan running, this would be ideal.

During the drying stage, you may notice some dirt reappearing. When I show you how to clean car upholstery that has had glue spills on it, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. You can simply take a dry towel and rub these areas as they dry and it will pick it up. There is no doubt that this is a long and exhausting process when learning how to clean upholstery. There is a lot of bending and scrubbing involved. This is why many people choose to take their cars to a local detail shop and have the interior steam cleaned. Although, if you want to save money and learn how to do it yourself, this is one way to do it and get great results.