While keeping your car clean is important, the level of care you choose can significantly impact its appearance and lifespan. Let’s explore the key differences between two of the most popular services you’ll come across when looking into car cleaning: car washing and car detailing.
An Overview of Car Washing
Let’s begin with a look at car washing. Just as it sounds, this is the process of using water and other cleaning products to wash away dirt and grime from a car. Cars naturally get dirty and dusty with time, regardless of whether they’re in use or sitting idle on driveways or the sides of the road.
Dust, dirt, sand, mud – it all takes a toll, and while rain can rinse some dirt away on its own, many marks and harmful substances remain stuck to a vehicle until they’re properly washed away. Many owners wash their cars often, either via a mobile car wash at home or a local business, which can vary from small “mom and pop” type of places to gigantic establishments, like the world’s biggest car wash in Germany.
A car wash is usually a quick and relatively light form of cleaning that typically takes about half an hour. It’s designed to wash away the surface-level dirt and grime around the car’s exterior, leaving it looking cleaner and fresher for the next journey.
An Overview of Car Detailing
An easy way to think of car detailing is as a much more thorough, comprehensive, and (as the name implies) detailed version of car washing. While a car wash may involve using soapy water to clean up the outside of the car, detailing goes way deeper, cleaning both the inside and exterior using various products and techniques.
While a car wash offers a basic clean much like a quick shower, car detailing is more similar to a luxurious spa day. It can involve washing, vacuuming, and deep cleaning the tires, windows, and cabin, the application of waxes and coatings, and much more. The objective? To not only clean the car, but to make it look the absolute best for as long as possible, and protect against future damage.
Given that cars are typically the second-largest investment most people make after their homes, it’s easy to see why many car owners choose to invest in car detailing. This helps them protect their investment and get more value and enjoyment out of it.
Car Wash vs. Car Detail: The Differences
To properly understand how car washing and detailing differ, we need to look closer at the distinctions that define them.
Detailing Is for Both Interior and Exterior
Most of the time, car washes only focus on the outside of the car. That’s because they’re mainly aimed at removing the visible dirt and marks around the exterior, like water marks on the windows, mud under the wheel arches, and dirt on the body.
Detailing, however, is a deep cleaning of both the interior and exterior of a vehicle. The inside gets just as much attention as the outside, and that means the seats get vacuumed, stains and spots get washed away, trash and clutter are cleared up, and even little elements like cup holders are cleaned.
Detailing Is Less Frequent, But More Thorough
Stats show that the majority of American car owners wash their vehicles 13 times a year, which works out to just over once a month. Many wash their cars more frequently than that, with some doing it once a week, especially those who use their cars often or live in areas where grime builds up fast.
Detailing is usually not quite as frequently needed. While you might wash a car every couple of weeks, you might only have it detailed once every few months. It’s a less frequent process, but a much more thorough one that cleans all the cracks and crevices and components, big and small.
Detailing Is a More Flexible Process
Your average car wash will include:
• A pre-rinse of the exterior
• Soaking with soapy water or car shampoo
• Some light scrubbing of stains and stubborn areas
• Cleaning the windows (from the outside) and the tires
• Rinsing off the suds
• Drying
Car detailing services in Gilbert AZ, however, can include a lot more than that. Examples include vacuuming, headlight restoration, applying waxes and coatings, correcting scratches and paint problems, cleaning up the carpets, conditioning the seats, restoring the trim, and much more.
Many professional car detailing firms also offer different detailing menus, packages, and optional (add-on) services. This means that owners have more options to choose from and can decide on a flexible package that fits their needs and budget, rather than the “one size fits all” approach of a car wash.
Detailing Produces More Impressive, Longer-Lasting Results
If you had two cars of the same make, model, age, and condition, and you had one of them washed and the other detailed, you’d see a clear difference in the two afterward.
Both would look clean, of course, but the one that underwent detailing would simply look much better overall. Its interior would feel fresh and tidy, and its exterior would shimmer and shine, as though it were brand new.
That’s because detailing produces much more impressive results on the whole, and it’s not just for show. Since detailing usually involves the use of special waxes, coatings, and other protective products, a detailed car will have a better chance of staying clean and protected from the elements for longer than one that’s been merely washed.
