How to clean automotive floormats
How to clean automotive floormats
How to clean automotive floormatsYour car's floor mats are possibly its dirtiest interior surface. Consider that for thousands of hours your dirty shoes have rested on top of your floor mats.
Don't rush out and buy new formats just because they are dirty. At an average cost of about $100 per set, that's an expensive solution to a relatively easy to resolve problem.
The most common attempt that car owners made to clean their own formats involves buying an over-the-counter carpet shampoo and scrubbing their mats into a foam and then vacuuming out that phone. The problem with this is that a vacuum cleaner may only be able to recover about half of the dirt and the phone that you inject into your carpets.
What professional car detailers do is pressure wash these formats on the ground. Just spray some carpet shampoo onto the mats' surface. Then with an electric or gas pressure washer pressure wash the floor mats from about 6 inches away. Move from left to right slowly moving up the floor mat and you'll see dirty water being flushed out of your floor mat.
Continue pressure washing until the water flowing off of your floor mats is clear. Once you have finished, hang your floor mats against a wall until they drip dry. Then vacuum the wet edge of the floor mat and place it back into your car. Your mats will look virtually new.
Be sure to repeat this cleaning process every 6 months to maintain a fresh appearance to your car's interior.