Best Way to Clean Car Carpet at Home

Using floor mats protects your car carpet from getting too dirty, but due to infrequent cleaning, it can be way dirtier than your floor mats. Car carpet collects a lot of dust, dirt, sand, and even liquids for a long time without being cleaned well. Did you forget about that spilled coffee on your carpet two years ago? It’s still there. Don’t worry, even if you are a beginner, you can use our best way to clean car carpet at home.

Even light carpets can look nice under car seats and floor mats but underneath tons of debris. Maybe you noticed the strange smell or want to make a deep car interior detailing after buying a used car, but how can you do it properly at home?

What do you need to clean car carpet at home?

It is the minimum arsenal of inventory you will need to clean car carpets properly, and most you can find at home. Even if you need to purchase missing inventory, don’t worry. You will find tons of use cases where you will use it in the future to detail your car.

Best way to clean car carpet at home: Step-by-Step

1. Remove car seats and floor mats to clean car carpet at home

Unscrew four bolts that are holding your seats (marked in red color on the photo above), and unplug connectors (marked in green color on the photo above). You can clean your carpet without removing seats, but I highly recommend doing it. We are looking to deep clean the car carpet, and under the seats, there are a lot of places we cannot reach without unscrewing them. Believe me, you will be surprised at how much garbage you have under the seats. While your seats are outside, you can make a more accurate leather car seats cleaning and cloth car seats cleaning.

2. Vacuum the carpet with a hard-bristle brush to collect all debris from it

Do this step with high quality. If you vacuum your carpet accurately, it will look much cleaner and will make the results of your next steps more effective. First, you can collect debris with a vacuum cleaner, then brush the carpet to fluff it and lift sand and other dirt from the carpet fibers. Go through the carpet surface with a vacuum cleaner again and collect more debris by brushing it with a hard-bristle brush together.

3. Collect hair and other debris using a pet hair removal brush

A pet hair brush is on my list of the best tools for detailing cars, which I believe every car enthusiast should use to clean their car’s interiors.

This step is pretty simple but requires you to be accurate and collect as much hair as possible. If you have dark-colored car carpets, you might think your carpet is perfectly clean after completing this step. I wish it were so, but to make it clean, have a little break and move to step four.

4. Spray the fabric cleaner

Following the instructions of your carpet cleaner, prepare it and spray it on the car carpet. Using a hard-bristle brush, spread the cleaner and brush the carpet. If your vacuum cleaner has an extraction nozzle, you can do the 4th and 5th steps together.

5. Vacuum the residue from the carpet

Prepare your vacuum cleaner for wet cleaning. Replace the paper dust bag with a foam wet cleaning filter, and put on a wet cleaning nozzle.

Pick up all possible residue of cleaner and dirt. If the carpet still doesn’t look clean, reapply the cleaner and repeat the process until you are satisfied with the result.

6. Let the carpet dry, brush carpet fibers, and apply a fabric protector

Conclusion

Following these steps, you can easily clean your car carpet even at home and without experience. Depending on how often you drive your car, how many people you are taking with you, and how often you pour coffee on your carpet, decide how often you should make a deep clean, as I explained. On average, to clean a car carpet so accurately will be enough once in 1-2 years. Carpets usually are not getting dirty as fast as floor mats.

For those who, for some reason, don’t use floor mats, I can advise buying a set of them. Otherwise, you will need to deep clean the car carpet, often, to keep it clean all the time.

I’m sure that with this detailed guide to deep car carpet cleaning you will finally detail your carpet and protect it in the nearest time, and bring back your car’s interior factory-new look!