Is Simple Green Safe For Car Interior?

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When it comes to cleaning your car interior, you need to use the best products in the market. This is because most car interior components are delicate and require special care.

The Simple Green auto care products are among the most popular options in the market; but is Simple Green safe for car interior? Yes, you can use Simple Green to clean your car interior, but it’s not recommended due to several reasons, which we’ll discuss shortly.

Just like Windex, Simple Green is a household name, remarkable for its multipurpose cleaners. However, there have been controversial assumptions that simple green cleaners aren’t good for cleaning car interiors. While that is not true about simple green cleaners, here’s what you need to know.

Is Simple Green Safe For Car Interior?

Generally, it is not advisable to oversaturate your car interior, especially the seats (whether leather or fabric). Quite many car owners allege that Simple Green is not suitable for cleaning car interiors. The reason is quite simple, Simple Green cleaner is a degreaser; so, what it does is to “degrease” any surface it is applied to.

When Simple Green is used to clean your leather car seat, it dries the oil on the leather, and you should know that leather needs oil. Hence, when Simple Green degreaser removes all the oil in your car seat’s leather, the look would definitely change, and you won’t love the new look.

Well, the complaints about Simple Green not being a safe product for cleaning car interior (especially leather seats) were made many years ago, and the manufacturer, Simple Green, has improved the formula for making their all-purpose cleaner over these years.

However, asides from the controversy about using Simple Green cleaner for your car seat leather, the product can generally come in as a handy alternative to standard car wash soaps for washing car exterior. Also, you can use the Simple Green cleaner for other automobiles, including motorbikes, trucks, etc.

Simple Green also provided a guide you can follow to clean your car seat using its all-purpose cleaner. We replicated and simplified the guide below:

  • Mix Simple Green with water and pour into a spray bottle
  • Spray the solution on your car seat leather and allow it to sit for a while. You should be careful not to oversaturate your vehicle’s seats with water.
  • Now, using a microfiber towel, wipe/scrub the seat that you sprayed the solution on. Do not allow the solution to dry into your car seat leather. You can also use a soft bristle brush or non-abrasive scrubbing pad.
  • Immediately after scrubbing, get another microfiber towel and dip it into a bucket of clean water to use in rinsing/cleaning the seat.
  • Open up your car doors and allow the cleaned seats to dry completely. No one should sit or use the washed seat until it is completely dried.

Important Tip: probably, while waiting for the solution to set (after spraying it to your car seat), it quickly dried into your upholstery, you shouldn’t just ignore that, as it could hasten wear and tear. When such a situation occurs, make a homemade cleaning compound by mixing baking soda and vinegar.

Use the solution to wash the seats; it’d remove the dried simple green and nothing would happen to your upholstery.

What’s The Best Alternative Cleaner To Substitute Simple Green?

We’d recommend that you use leather cleaners for cleaning your car seat leathers. Also, for other interior components, you can clean them using other household cleaning products or specific products for cleaning that component; for example, using a car dashboard cleaner to clean your car’s dashboard.

Conclusion

So, is Simple Green safe for car interior? The simple answer is yes, but it not recommendable. The product is basically a degreaser and is liable to mess up your car seats’ leather.

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