Cleaning Car Mats Like A Pro

Why?

A decent set of car mats is not only useful for safeguarding your carpets from general wear and tear, but they're also ideal for providing a professional-style finishing touch to any detail. The best news is that cleaning and sanitising your mats is easy. And as for pattern striping? Well, everyone asks us about that - so, here's how it's done…

How It's Done…

First, remove your mats from the car, shake off the worst of the grime (do this outside, naturally) and give them a thorough beating on the reverse to loosen up any ingrained dirt locked in the fibres. Now lay them down on a nice flat surface.

Use your vacuum cleaner and a crevice tool to suck the loosened dirt out of the carpet, using your fingers to massage the fibres apart as you go. If there's a lot of dirt still trapped, try giving the carpet a firm whack with the palm of your hand in front of the vacuum.

Once your mats are free from dirt, give them a light mist of a 1:5 dilution of Verso All Purpose Cleaner or Total Interior Cleaner. Remember that you don't need to totally saturate them, a quick spritz over will be plenty.

Now gently massage the Verso into the carpet using an upholstery brush, unless there are any particularly harsh stains, you don't need a great deal of pressure, this is more about sanitising and deep-cleaning the fabric. Be sure to work the verso into any plastic clips, vinyl heel patches or metal plates.

While the mats are still damp you can give them the final finishing touches using your Upholstery Brush. Striping carpets is easy when you know how, first brush all the fabric one way so the fibres lay flat.

Now you can create your pattern by brushing the fibres in the opposite direction, so they stand up. The contrast is simply created by the light hitting the flat or raised fibres.

Once you are happy with your stripes, leave your mats to fully dry. This will slightly stiffen the fibres giving the stripes a little more durability.

And that's all there is to it, once you've completed your mats, you'll be itching to clean and stripe your carpets, too.