Spring Cleaning Car Care Tips and Why You Should Detail Your Car

Mar 26, 2025

It’s National Cleaning Week! We’ve gone over plenty of ways to clean and organize your garage, and prep your work area for projects, but what about focusing on that car you worked so hard on? Keeping your ride pristine, crisp, and looking fresh as the day you got it is the name of the game, today! We’re going to share a checklist of basic spring cleaning tasks, as well as some great reasons why detailing and cleaning your car regularly is a great idea!

Check your vehicle’s lights. Cold winter weather can take its toll on your lightbulbs and tail lights. Do a quick once over on your car, and make sure that all of your car’s headlights and exterior lamps as well as interior lights are working properly at full brightness. Properly working light bulbs and LEDs can increase your visibility during foggy, hazy weather and rain. Apply a good headlight cleaning solution to the casing to remove dings, scratches, and dullness
Change your cabin air filter. Springtime is notoriously bad for allergy sufferers, and the cabin air filter is a great way to clean the air and reduce pollen, mold, and other allergens in your car’s interior. Consider adding a portable HEPA filter to your vehicle in the back seat or center console/cup holder to aid in filtering out allergens!
Do an oil change and remember to change the filter! Warm weather means lots of joy rides, so you may need an oil change sooner than you’d expect! If you’re not able to change your own oil at home, it’s a great time to book your regular oil change appointment. Check with your service center to see if your vehicle needs a different higher temperature oil for the incoming warmer weather.
Replace wiper blades and apply hydrophobic coating to your windshield. April Showers bring May Flowers, but it’s important to have clear visibility as you drive if you’d like to see the sights of springtime blooming around you!
Clean and wash your pet’s seat protectors, crate, and other transport items. Bringing your pets on the road with you is always a fun time, but it’s important to remember they track in a lot of dirt, gravel, grime, and build-up too! Giving their car seats, seat covers, and other car accessories a thorough vacuuming, washing, and sanitizing can help remove allergens from your vehicle, as well as preparing you for more fun hiking and treks with your pup!
Give your car a thorough exterior car wash to remove salt and grime, and be sure to detail your vehicle’s interior. Make sure you have your car professionally cleaned to remove the winter muck and salt residue! Next, be sure to get a good upholstery shampoo and vacuum on all of your car’s fabric, or bring it in to a local vehicle detailer. If your car has a leather or leather-blend interior, it’s important to condition the fabric so it doesn’t crack or peel during hot weather months; consider applying a leather conditioner and protector to the surfaces. See below for more information on detailing your vehicle.

What is automotive detailing and why should you do it regularly?

Detailing is an intense cleaning process that thoroughly cleans the interior and exterior of the vehicle, and light restoration and maintenance that restore your vehicle looking almost new! Detailers hide minor scratches and imperfections through the process of polishing, waxing and sealing. Some detailers do put your vehicle through an automatic car wash first to get the initial grime off, but the rest of the process is done up, close, and personal by hand using special cloths.

The detailing is more costly than your average car wash, but these professional cleaners use highly specialized chemicals and sometimes even light cosmetic paint restorations and high-tech protective coating.

The best time to do a full detail on your car is during Summer and Fall, but Winter and Spring detailing is important if you live in an area with lots of winter weather, salt/gravel, and ice. Detailing will help prevent those things from building up on your vehicle and causing rust or other damage.

As for the additional benefits of detailing, those include:

Detailers can preserve the vehicle’s paint and correct minor paint imperfections.
Protect your upholstery with deep cleaning, stain prevention and removal, and odor elimination.
The interior will be fully vacuumed, washed, steamed, deodorized.
Detailing not only extends the life of your car, but it will preserve the value by keeping it pristine through not just the cleaning but detailed inspections and cleanings of the engine.
Reduces the spread of germs and allergens through regular maintenance and deep cleaning.
Only 2 to 3 deep cleanings are required on average per year, making it an easy maintenance step and budget friendly.