How to detail your car when you don't have room at home

Our extensive range of pro detailing products are specifically designed to help you get professional results at home. But, what if you haven’t got room to detail your car where you live? Well, there’s a solution for that, too.

The number one rule in detailing is to use safe techniques to achieve your goals without inflicting damage. But we understand that not everyone has the space to carry out a full detail safely at home. You may live in a flat or a house with no off-road parking. You may not have access to a hose where you do park and you may not even own a pressure washer. In some cases, there’s local restrictions on washing at home or on the public roads. But none of this means that you can’t get a safe and effective detail and have to resort to dropping your car to a professional detailer.

With the right detailing products and accessories, you can carry out a safe car wash routine, along with many other aspects of detailing - including hand polishing, application of protection and interior cleaning - and get yourself a great swirl-free detail at any public jet wash…

What public car washes are suitable for safe detailing?

A little planning always goes a long way here, you’re going to have to locate a suitable jet wash. What you’re looking for is any standard jet wash – you know, the ones with a pressure washer and a big foamy brush. Although you’ll never be using the latter because you can guarantee it’s been left on the ground at some point and picked up plenty of dirt and grit along the way. In most cases, particularly here in the UK, you’ll be close to a petrol station jet wash, but bear in mind that there are many European-style, self-service car wash centres dotted around, too. These can be a great choice because they’ll have multiple wash bays, so you won’t have to rush.

In any case automated car washes are no good, the big cleaning brushes will inevitably scratch your paintwork. When looking for swirl-free results, hand car washes aren’t a great choice, either. First you won’t be able to wash your car yourself, which kind of defeats the object. And second, they may not be using surface safe detailing products or safe wash techniques. So, a public jet wash is the only solution for a proper detail.

If you’re planning on detailing your interior one other thing to look out for is the car vac. These are, in fact, becoming less and less common on the forecourts nowadays. It's not essential for every detail of course, and you may have a cordless vac. But it's a part of the detail that can be easily forgotten.

What do I need to take?

First thing's first, and it’s pretty obvious, you need to take all the detailing products you require with you. It’s not like you can just pop back into the cupboard to grab another microfibre towel, is it? So, first think about the type of detail you need to carry out, is it routine maintenance or are you polishing and adding protection? Do you need to clean your interior and what finishing products do you need for your particular car? It all affects what products you’ll need to bring along.

Of course, there’s also accessories that you’ll need for every wash, brushes and Detailing Buckets and your wash mitt – you can’t contact wash without them, right? When it comes to accessories, we have you covered for every process on every finish, but we do have a few that are particularly useful for this particular scenario…

And we don’t just mean our selection of extra large detailing bags for carrying your selection of detailing products and accessories to the job, such as our Crew Bag and Deluxe Holdall.

We have our 16-litre Mini Detailing Buckets which have been specifically designed for saving space and fit in the boot of just about any car. Our Foaming Pressure Sprayer is another essential which you’ll need for an effective pre-wash, it’s the only way to apply snow foam without a Snow Foam Lance.

Before you leave, think about how you’ll get your water. They may not have a separate tap at the jet wash, so be sure to dilute any products you need first. This will include your Avalanche Snow Foam along with any concentrated pre-cleaners and wheel cleaners.

Finally, your wash water itself, it makes sense to use our Detailing Bucket Lids for a couple of reasons. It can be difficult filling a bucket using a powerful jet wash, so filling up at home, or half filling and merely topping up with the jet wash saves time, it also saves money because the less time you use on the jet wash, the less you have to pay. If you fill up at home instead, you’ll be ready to go.

Wheel Cleaning

The key difference with using a self-service jet wash and car washing at home is that - generally speaking - you pay more when you take longer. To cut down on time with the jet wash idlily counting down, we take a few conservation measures throughout the whole detail, and this starts with the wheels.

Every detail (when you’re not cleaning engine bays and under the chassis) begins with cleaning wheels. This is simply to prevent spreading the harshest grime to other potentially sensitive areas, like the paintwork, after it’s already been cleaned.

Normally we rinse the wheels first to remove any grime that can be removed by water pressure alone. Here though, we’re trying to save time with the water on, so we not only start off with applying our wheel cleaner, but we’re looking to clean all four wheels before we ‘stick a quid in the slot’.

There’s a couple of things to look out for here. First make sure the wheels are cool to the touch. Most importantly though, never let any detailing product dry on your car naturally.

Surfactant-based cleaning agents - including Imperial Wheel Cleaner - need to be wet to be most effective at safely lifting and encapsulating grime. If they dry on surface there’s no wet solution left to hold the grime away from the surface, all you have is the grime itself. On a cold day (and as long as you’re working quickly) it’s easy to clean all four wheels before rinsing without them drying out. BUT, if there’s any danger of water and cleaning products drying out on your wheels, you’ll have to wash and rinse them one by one. That’s just the way it is. Of course, if the soiling is particularly heavy, say your car is covered in mud, you may want to carry out a pre-rinse anyway.

Here we’re also using our dilute-to-suit Imperial Wheel Cleaner Concentrate in a Pressure Sprayer, which enables us to add a little more water to the solution. This means we can blast even more on there, helping the surfaces to say wetter for longer.

Aside from that, it’s a standard safe wheel wash procedure here. Spray on your Imperial solution and agitate using your selection of wheel brushes and a Plush Wheel Mitt that are appropriate for the design and finish of your wheels. Once you’ve ensured contact with every awkward recess on all four, you can turn the jet wash on and rinse them all down.

Pre-wash

As we always say the pre-wash is the most important stage in detailing, because it’s here where we remove the most harmful, large gritty particles that may inflict scratches and swirl marks on sensitive surfaces if you drag them over your car with a mitt. Always perform a contactless pre-wash before you reach for the bucket, it’s the first step to an impeccable swirl-free finish.

The first part of your pre-wash is a full and thorough rinse down of the whole vehicle, from top to bottom. In this case we jump straight into that after we’ve rinsed our wheels. You get a good few minutes on the timer at most jet washes, so you can rinse those together.

The reason we always pre-rinse is simple, it gets rid of any loose contamination so our pre-cleaner can get to work where it’s most needed – on the bonded grime.

Here we’re using Citrus Power Bug & Grime Remover, which has been specifically developed to dissolve grime, breaking it down and lifting the harmful particles from all surfaces. The solution then surrounds the contamination, encapsulating it, and allowing it to be rinsed away safely, without abrading the surface itself. Citrus Power is supplied ready-to-use, so it’s a simple spray-on job.

Apply liberally over the whole vehicle, let it dwell for a few seconds and rinse, it really as that simple. We always advise starting on the dirtiest areas, such as the bumpers, lower halves and rear end, just to give them a little more dwell time.

Once you’ve applied your Citrus Power on every panel, you can rinse the whole car thoroughly and watch the grime slide off. If you’re quick, you’ll still have a bit of time left on the jet wash, too.

Snow Foam

The second stage of your pre-wash should always be using Avalanche Snow Foam. This master pre-cleaner is designed to linger for longer to break the bonds of the most stubborn, stuck-on contamination, again surrounding the smallest particles for the safest removal. This wax, sealant and coating-safe citrus-infused cleaning agent also works its way into all the panel gaps and nooks, cleaning those, too.

The key to using Avalanche is to get it on there without missing any bits and then to leave it for a long as possible to do its job, crucially without letting the foam dry out. As soon as Avalanche starts to dry, it’s time to rinse away the grime.

As you know, we haven’t got our Foam Lance here, so we’re applying our foam using a Foaming Pressure Sprayer, a quick and simple task. One thing to note is that many specialist cleaning centres also have a lance that offers snow foam. Unfortunately, the heavy-duty chemical products they use aren’t necessarily the best for your paintwork, or any protection layers. To stick to the detailer’s safe wash process always take along your Avalanche to get the job done right!

Two Bucket Contact Wash

Now all the harmful larger particle grit and grime is removed by our contactless pre-wash, we can move onto the contact wash. And by now you’ll see that pre-filling your buckets had paid dividends.

As always, we’ll be carrying out a safe two-bucket wash method here. Using one bucket for our shampoo, and one to rinse out our wash media between passes.

Speaking of shampoo, Lather Car Shampoo is the perfect cleaner for this job because it contains no additives like false shining agents or waxes. In this case we’ll be hand polishing later, so leaving a wax or a coating on there would be a waste of time. Lather is also ideal for routine maintenance, because it’s wax, sealant and coating safe – so it won’t strip any previously applied protection, either.

Like our pre-wash products Lather is an aqueous cleaning agent that deep cleans safely using a combination of advanced surfactants and degreasers that actively pull microscopic dirt particles from the surface and surround them in the solution. Anything your wash media doesn’t trap while you wash can then be rinsed away safely. Technically this next-generation car shampoo is also classed as a lubricant because it lubricates particles to help them slip and slide over the surface and off the car without causing damage.

A couple of capfuls in your wash bucket is enough here, as there’s a bit of time left on the jet wash from rinsing our snow foam residue, we can also give it a froth up using the lance.

It goes without saying that the wash media you choose is also important. A good wash mitt or pad should have a deep pile that traps particulates as it glides over the surface, holding them deep in the pile itself and away from sensitive surfaces until they’re rinsed out in you bucket. A sponge on the other hand would just push these particles around, creating swirl marks. So, this is why microfibre or lambswool is used to make all our wash media – it’s simply far safer when you’re looking for professional swirl-free results.

Here we’re using our extra large Plush Wash Pad, which is ideal to get the job done quickly, but the wash mitt or pad you choose is also down to your personal preference – what do you like to use to pamper your paintwork? We have a full selection to choose from.

Second, the route you take as you wash is crucial to swirl-free success, to prevent cross-contamination (and by that we mean risking taking grime from dirtier areas to cleaner areas) always start on the cleanest parts of the vehicle first. In most cases you’ll be starting with the roof, windscreen bonnet and upper sides, and finishing with the bumpers, lower sides and the rear end. While you’re washing remember to work in straight lines, as this helps to prevent causing swirling in your paintwork and gloss plastics.

Once you’ve contacted every surface you can fire up the jet wash and rinse the whole car thoroughly from the top down.

Decontamination

If we were going for routine maintenance here, we could now move onto drying because the wet work would be finished. But, as we said, this is a full enhancement and we’ll be hand polishing and adding protection later, so first we need to prepare our paintwork with a ‘decon wash’.

A 3-stage decontamination is a process designed to remove bonded and embedded contamination such as protein deposits from bird droppings and bug splatter, ferrous metal fall out and sticky tar or glue residues - basically the stuff washing alone cannot shift. There’s three distinct stages because we deal with three specialist products that are specifically designed to remove each type of contaminant safely.

The first stage is designed to remove metal contamination. What we’re looking at here is sharp iron particles (which usually come from brake dust), that embed themselves in the top layer of your relatively soft paint and clearcoat. On lighter colours these can appear as tiny rust spots in the surface itself, but often they are invisible to the eye. With the abundance of hot brake dust flying around on the road, caused by your car and others, it’s almost inevitable that you will have metal contamination all over. We remove these harmful particles now because we don’t want to be locking these in with our protection layers or pulling them out with our polishing pad and swirling them around, damaging the surface.

The only way to safely remove these sharp pieces of embedded metal shrapnel is to chemically dissolve them into a solute that can be rinsed away. This type of chemical removal is performed by Iron Out Contaminant Remover, which dissolves the metal without harming the surface underneath.

Using Iron Out is simple, you just spray it all over your paintwork and within seconds you’ll see it react. It’s a clear solution to start off, but in the presences of metal particles, it turns blood red, highlighting the contamination. Then you can simply rinse away the metal trapped in the solution.

The next step is removing any stuck-on tar and sticky glue residues. In a similar way these have to be chemically dissolved but this time using an extremely strong solvent. The idea is that the solvent melts away the contamination, breaking the bond with the surface and allowing it to be rinsed, or wiped away with a microfibre cloth.

The main difference is that here we use ObliTARate Tar & Glue Remover in a more targeted way. This type of contamination is usually visible so after a quick inspection we spray onto the areas that need decontamination, and then wipe or rinse away the residue.

The main thing to remember about ObliTARate is that it’s an extremely powerful solvent blend capable of melting through hardy glue layers. While it’s completely safe to use on your paintwork and glass, any left-over solvent will make a mess of your detailing clay in the next step. So, when you’re finished removing those sticky residues it’s important to rewash the treated areas using your Lather Car Shampoo. This neutralises the solvents and allows you to move on to the next decontamination stage.

The final decontamination step is using fine detailing clay to physically pall any remaining contamination out of the surface. This process should be completed over every inch of paintwork and glass and is designed to safely eradicate the bonded environmental deposits you may not be able to see but you’ll probably be able to feel. This is where rough paintwork is given a smooth, glass-like surface that’s ready for enhancement and refinement through polishing.

Our Clay Bar is aided by Glide Clay Lube in this process. This advanced lubricant not only helps your clay slip and slide over the surface removing contamination as it goes but encapsulates any particles that have come loose keeping them away from your paintwork.

People love to complicate this process but it’s actually very simple. You take a piece of clay, flatten it into a pad, lubricate the clay and the surface, and then just run the clay back and forth in straight lines with light pressure. You’ll feel the resistance get less and less as the clay picks up the contamination, leaving a smooth surface behind. The only thing to remember is to check the clay every few passes and, when it gets dirty, fold and kneed it to reveal a fresh piece.

Once you’ve completed all your paintwork, glass and gloss plastics, give the car a thorough rinse down, and you’re ready to dry.

Drying

A mistake that many make, especially when visiting any kind of car wash, is not drying their car. Put simply, this is what causes water spots, many of which will require polishing to fully remove.

Water spots aren’t actually water, they’re caused when the mineral impurities in water - particularly the tap water you’ll be using to clean your car - are left on the surface. When you let your car air dry what happens is the water part evaporates off and leaves the impurities behind. The only way to avoid this is to dry your whole car thoroughly, soaking up the impurities while they’re still contained in the water. This is the reason why we use a suitable drying towel (here we’re using our Silk Drying Towel) to absorb the water, rather than a chamois that will tend to push it around.

Once you’ve dried your whole car from top to bottom, you can move onto the next stage – enhancement. You can of course to do this in the cleaning bay, but, if there’s people waiting, it’s only polite to move your car somewhere else, and then you can take your time a bit more. In any case, that’s the jet wash bit done and dusted.

Paintwork Enhancement

When you’re carrying out any sort of polishing outside, the key is to be thorough, but relatively speedy. It’s one thing hand or machine polishing in a controlled environment such as in your garage or under a canopy, but when you’re out and about performing a simple hand polish you need a polishing product that breaks down quickly to refine and enhance your paintwork or clearcoat.

Tripple All-in-One Polish is perfect for this task because it has been specifically developed for speedy details. This advanced car polish contains advanced diminishing abrasives that can be applied using a machine polisher but are still easy to work all the way through by hand, breaking down and refining paintwork by removing light swirling and scratches as they go.

This product is also classed as a ‘cleaner polish’ or ‘cleaner wax’ because it’s not only packed with deep-cleaning solvents that clean away oxidation and stains on a molecular level, but it also contains T1-Grade Brazilian Carnauba Wax. This means that Tripple will leave behind a layer of deep, glossy protection that lasts for up to a month. In fact, Tripple is also formulated to include a special paint glaze, so it will fill and obscure swirl marks, too. In other words, what we’ve got here is the ultimate car polish for a quick enhancement with professional results.

Applying Tripple with a microfibre Polish Pad gives optimum results in record time. A few drops is all it takes for each panel, and Tripple can be used to enhance gloss plastics, wheels and even your taillights, too.

Working one part or panel at a time simply apply in small circular motions with medium pressure, leave to haze and then buff away the residue with a microfibre towel, such as one of our short-pile microfibre Work Cloths. You’ll immediately see the difference in the level of shine and, because Tripple cures almost immediately, you can go on to add even more gloss and protection over the top.

Paintwork Protection

As we’ve said, Tripple leaves behind a tough layer of wax protection, so we could leave the paintwork there and we’d have a great enhancement complete. But at this stage there’s no harm in enhancing the gloss, durability and hydrophobic performance of your protection even further with a little more wax protection.

Again, the added protection you choose will depend on the time you have available and, perhaps most importantly, what you like to use. It could one of our Signature Hard Waxes, or Radiance Carnauba Crème – both will give you exceptional results in terms of gloss and durability, not to mention even more of the warm carnauba glow we all love.

In the interests of keeping our on-the-go detailing as speedy as possible here though, in this case we’ll be bringing on the shine with the quickest wax protection product known to man – Glisten Spray Wax. This advanced detailing spray is not only quick to use on all your exterior panels, but on awkward areas such as door jambs and boot shuts, too. You can even use Glisten to treat areas that normally go unprotected such as inside panel gaps. Best of all, you can complete a whole car in a matter of minutes because all it takes is a light spritz and a wipe using a plush finishing towel such as the Ultra Plush Microfibre we’re using here. Topping up the protection on subsequent maintenance details is just as quick and simple, too.

Interior Cleaning

If you haven’t already moved your car now’s the time to get over to the car vac and give that interior a spot of attention.

Now obviously, the level of interior cleaning required here will depend on your car. In our case a spot of light cleaning is all that’s required to bring this particular daily driver back to spotless. But that said, the products and procedures don’t change a great deal for most interior details, and it’s always worth keeping your interior in mind and making it a part of your regular wash routine. It makes sense that the better you maintain your interior, the less you’re going to have to fully deep-clean in the future.

For this, and most other details, all that’s required is a couple of pro-grade cleaning products that you can keep safely tucked away in your boot. And once again, the only difference with using a public car vac is maximising your time and money while you have it switched on.

For most interior details we’ll complete the car piece by piece, starting by fully cleaning the boot area, before moving onto the rear cabin, and then the front. In this case we’ll simply use the vac to remove all the loose debris in one go, just so it’s not sitting idle, counting down the minutes.

Once you’ve thoroughly vacuumed the whole interior - including the boot areas, seats, carpets and door cards - you can then break out the cleaning products to deep clean and sanitise all the surfaces.

Total Interior Cleaner is our interior cleaning product of choice here, simply because it does it all. From general cleaning and sanitising to targeted spot cleaning and stain removal, this ready-to-use cleaner is safe for all materials you’ll find inside your car. Whether you’re cleaning leather and carpet, or cloth, Alcantara, plastics and rubber, Total is a surfactant and degreaser-based solution designed to be surface safe. Much like the other cleaners we’ve used on the outside of the car, the idea is that the solution breaks down grime, lifting and encapsulating potentially harmful particles, and allowing them to be removed without abrading the surface underneath. As it’s an interior cleaner it doesn’t abrade fabrics and soft surfaces, while still cleaning deep down in the material, making it ideal for regular use on every detail.

Most of all, Total is extremely easy to use, on hard surfaces a spray and a wipe with your microfibre Work Cloth is all you need. While on floor mats, carpets and cloth a little agitation with an Upholstery Brush or Interior Detail Brush helps draw out any hidden grime and stains before you wipe them away.

The other interior cleaning product that’s ideal for regular use is Spritz Interior Quick Detailer. Ideal for hard plastic surfaces such as dashboards, consoles and LCD screens, this surfactant-based cleaner is as much about the advanced protection properties as it is the actual cleaning.

Spritz works in the same way, trapping dust and grime in the solution for safe removal, but it also leaves behind a non-sticky subtle factory finish bringing those plastics back to life. Again, a spray and a wipe is all you need here, or a little agitation with a soft Detailing Brush or Feather Tip Brush on spills and sticky residues in awkward nooks and gloss plastics.

Perhaps the best thing about Spritz is that it’s also packed with UV inhibitors designed to combat the fading and cracking associated with the parts of your interior that are always exposed to the sun. It also contains special anti-static agents to help limit dust and grime build-up in the future. Keeping your interior looking better for longer. Quick and easy to use, Spritz is one of those all-time great products for interior cleaning and touch ups on the go.

Finishing Touches

With the detail almost complete we can move onto the finishing touches. Again, the products you need here will depend on your particular car. You may have some matt plastic trim that could benefit from being brought back to life with a little Revive Trim Dressing, or some metal brightwork, wheel lips or stainless exhaust tips that require some Mercury Metal Polish to push your detail to the next level.

With that said there are always two finishing touches we carry out regardless, and that’s dressing our tyres and cleaning our glass. Whether you choose to do this now while you’re still out and about or when you get back home - or maybe you’re on your way to an event - is up to you. The point is that nothing detracts more from an otherwise perfect detail than streaky widows and brown fading tyres. So, to prevent these drawing the eye, it’s a good pro tip to make sure you are finishing these areas off every time you wash your car.

First up, our tyres. Satin Tyre Crème is a great finisher to have in your kitbag because it not only nourishes the rubber and forms a long-lasting barrier layer to the elements, but you can choose the level of shine you’re after. One targeted application on your sidewalls with a Tyre Spot Pad or Tyre & Trim Applicator gives you a subtle satin sheen. While a couple more applications helps you build up an intense show car style gloss.

Application literally takes seconds, and it provides the perfect finishing touch to any detail, so why wouldn’t you?

The final part of any detail is cleaning your glass, inside and out. It’s almost inevitable that by now your glass will have picked up a few fingerprints or dust while you’ve been busy completing the rest of your detail, so to keep it clean and streak-free, a little Crystal Glass Cleaner is the ideal way to finish up the job.

This blend of mild distilled, fast-flashing solvents cuts through grime, dust and greasy films enabling quick and safe removal, and all it leaves behind is a streak and smear-free finish. Another product that takes only seconds but has a big impact on the overall detail.

A light spritz is all that’s required on each glass panel or mirror – remember that a little goes a long way. We also recommend our Superior Waffle Cloth for spreading and buffing to a high shine. This premium towel is specifically designed for glass because it helps trap any debris in the special waffle weave, keeping it off the glass itself for the best, and easiest, finish. Crystal and our Superior Waffle are the ultimate combo for quick, effective and safe glass cleaning and definitely ones to keep in your car at all times.

Finish With Finale

So that’s our super-quick, enhancement detail complete. But there’s just one last, not to mention super handy, detailing product to note – Finale Quick Detailer.

Our carnauba-infused finishing spray is a great perfecter for use at the end of any detail and - in this case at least - ideal for cleaning away any dust and fingerprints on all exterior surfaces when you get home… or even if you’re heading out to a show.

Ideal for all types of paintwork, trim and wheels, just spritz directly onto each panel and spread with a soft microfibre finishing towel, then fold your cloth to a nice fresh piece and lightly buff the surface to a rich, deep gloss. Safely removing light contamination and giving even more of that warm wax glow is always a winner, no matter the type of detail.

And that’s how you detail your car at the local public jet wash. Why not take this guide and adapt it to your own purposes? Whether that’s routine maintenance, a quick enhancement like this one, or somewhere in-between.

For more top detailing guides check out the Guides Section Of Our Blog.