Best car interior trim cleaners 2023
Is the interior of your car looking a bit worse for wear? Give it a sparkle with an interior trim cleaner, but don’t buy until you’ve seen our round-up of the best, and worst, on the market...
Is there anything worse than getting into a smelly, dusty car, where every surface is covered in fingerprints, or maybe even the odd stain? No? Well, if that sounds like your car, then it’s time to get out the interior trim cleaners. Sometimes you’ll want to clean your car thoroughly, to give it a really good spruce-up inside, but other times, it’s simply about maintaining the cleanliness and getting rid of a spot spain or light coating of dust.
Interior trim cleaners come in all shapes and sizes, and from a variety of price points. As well as well-known car care names such as Autoglym and Turtle Wax, we’re also testing products from brands including Car Gods, Dodo Juice and Sonax. While the majority of our test subjects come in 500ml form, some are available in larger bottles up to one litre.
In this test, we’ll name the best overall interior trim cleaner, pick out a recommendation which majors on value for money, and reveal which brew finished last in our tests.
The products or services referenced in this story have been reviewed independently by our experts. When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network. However, this will never influence our opinion or ratings.
1. BEST BUY: Autoglym interior shampoo (500ml)
Autoglym is a premium name in the car care world, yet this interior trim cleaner represents real value for money. It can be used to lightly freshen up your car’s interior, or (in combination with a brush) to tackle heavier dirt and stains. If you’re refreshing a surface, you spray it on directly, work it in with a microfibre cloth and wipe off with a clean rag. We found that the Autoglym cleaner was suitable for every surface we tried it on, including cloth and leather seats, steering wheel, seatbelts and the dashboard. It left behind a pleasant aroma, too.
What Car? rating Five stars out of five
How we found the best car interior trim cleaners
To find the best interior trim cleaners, we lined up a selection of products at different price points, and noted how effectively they cleaned the surfaces of our test car. We paid attention to the time taken to clean each surface to a respectable standard – looking for a restored natural finish, rather than a dazzling sparkle – as well as the different types of surfaces each product could be used on. As always, value was a factor too.
If you’re thinking of cleaning your car’s interior, then it’s advisable to have a selection of cloths to hand. Microfibre cloths are good at picking up dust or dirt from surfaces inside your car, while other cloths with smaller threads are good for polishing. It’s also worth using separate cloths for plastic and glass surfaces, to avoid leaving the dirt or grime from one upon the other.
2. BEST FOR BUDGET: Turtle Wax Dash and Glass (500ml)
As the name suggests, this product can be used on both plastics and glass, but not fabric or leather, so you’re likely to need more than one product if you’re cleaning your car’s full interior. We found it gave our interior plastics an attractive matte finish with no greasy feel, and the glass of our car was left streak-free. Even better, it smells better than most car air fresheners, and the scent lasts for a decent amount of time.
What Car? rating Four stars out of five
Other car air fresheners to consider
3. Dodo Juice Total Wipe Out (1000ml)
This product comes in a container double the size of most of the others tested, yet it doesn’t cost much more than the best here. It can be used on pretty much every surface and was almost as effective at removing greasy marks in our car’s interior as the winning Autoglym product. Everything was left clean and matte, and our windscreen glass was streak-free. We liked that it has a fresh natural fragrance, and we even had a couple of passengers saying our car smelled like new after using it.
What Car? rating Five stars out of five
4. Gyeon Q2M InteriorDetailer (500ml)
We liked the fresh scent of this brew, plus the fact that it comes with its own polishing wipe. It worked a treat on a couple of our tougher stains, as well as getting rid of the many fingerprints all over the piano black trim in our car. It left a matte, smudge-free finish and was effective on every surface we tried it on. If it wasn’t for a relatively high purchase price, this might have taken the win here.
What Car? rating Five stars out of five
5. CarPlan No.1 Super Valet (600ml)
CarPlan recommends spraying a little of its cleaner onto a microfibre cloth before working it into whichever surface you’re cleaning, in order to avoid over-using the mixture. That being said, there’s plenty of it to go around, with a generous 600ml helping in this bottle. The bottle says the brew is suitable for all hard surfaces, including plastic trims, dashboards and rubber, and it did a decent job on those, but it can’t stand up to the Autoglym alternative on softer surfaces. The scent from the end result was pleasant, too.
What Car? rating Four stars out of five
6. Sonax Xtreme Interior Cleaner (500ml)
This is a good value product which can be used to speedily spruce up your car’s interior, or tackle tougher stains. It made easy work of our car’s roof lining, and eliminated odours from a dog we’d had sitting in the car, as well as getting rid of her muddy paw prints from the carpets and doors. We also found it didn’t change the colour of the fabric where we’d used it on a small patch, although Sonax does recommend applying it over the whole surface to avoid colour and brightness differences.
What Car? rating Four stars out of five
7. Turtle Wax Hybrid Solutions Streak-Free Mist Interior Detailer (500ml)
This interior trim cleaner from Turtle Wax offers a unique selling point, in that its trigger spray mechanism can be adjusted to deliver a short, concentrated spray of product on a small area, or a longer burst on a wider one. It worked fairly well in our tests, especially when worked into surfaces until it had been fully absorbed, but some rivals were faster at loosening dirt and grime. After wiping away the excess with a microfibre cloth, it left our car smelling fresh. However, it’s let down by a high price.
What Car? rating Three stars out of five
8. Liqui Moly Auto Interior Cleaner (500ml)
This cleaner is for use on plastic, fabric and all other trim surfaces you might find inside a car. Liqui Moly recommends that you spray it directly onto the surface you’re cleaning using a damp sponge or cloth and work it in without letting the surface fully dry out. However, we found better results if we sprayed it onto our cloth first, where it left a lightly polished, streak-free finish. While the apple-like aroma left behind when we’d finished was pleasant, we wish it lasted a bit longer.
What Car? rating Three stars out of five
9. Car Gods Interior Detailer (500ml)
This product from Car Gods is for use on all hard surfaces in your car, including glass, carbon fibre, plastic, metal and wood. It doesn’t leave a shine like the best here, but it does clean very well. We found that it removed all traces of dog hair and dust and left a pleasant apple smell behind, which wasn’t too overwhelming. The product also comes with a 2-in-1 vent cleaner and a hard brush to help get to those hard-to-reach places, making it good value for money.
What Car? rating Three stars out of five
And the car trim cleaner to avoid...
10. GTechniq W2 Multi Purpose Cleaner
This formula comes last in our test because it isn't suitable for use when cleaning leather, which is a material commonly found inside cars. It is, however, easy to apply, and it did a good job at removing stains in our test car. The finish from many of our other contenders was better, though, and the scent left behind nothing to write home about.
The products or services referenced in this story have been reviewed independently by our experts. When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network. However, this will never influence our opinion or ratings.
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