I’ve been washing cars for as long as I can remember, and I can still remember those sunny childhood afternoons I spent with my father cleaning his Jeep with only a bucket, sponge, and gulp of the supermarket's finest off-brand dish soap. The best part for younger me was at the end when we threw the bucket of water over the car together. (Yes, for whatever reason, we used to throw the dirty, gritty water back over the car!). But hey, it was fun.
Today, the idea of washing the car the way we used to do when I was younger, as fun as it was, fills me with dread. The dread of knowing that buffing out the damage to the paint could take days to fix yourself or cost thousands to have a pro fix.
This post assumes the paint is already in some condition that is worth preserving. If your paint looks like total rubbish, washing it safely will only waste your time. If your paint is in good condition, you will want to wash your car in a way that won't cause damage to the paint. For this, all you need is about £40, a car, and a hosepipe with running water for a safe traditional wash. If you don't have access to running water, like if you live in a flat, university dormitory, or are in a drought, etc., it's still possible to safely wash your car, but you will need to budget about £140 to get started with rinseless washing.
The traditional car washing technique requires little time and resources, as long as you have some basic things, including running water, you'll be able to do a traditional wash.
The requirements are simple, you'll need:
Check the weather in advance and pick a day with little to no direct sunlight; it can be raining if you're okay with getting wet. On the day, park your car in a way that you have easy access to all sides of it. Fill up the bucket with 10L of water; that's halfway on the bucket I suggested before, and add the car soap; that's 2 capfuls of the Autoglym soap I also suggested before. Give it a mix and drop the grit guard and wash mitt in. Give the car a rinse using the highest setting of your appropriate hosepipe attachment to remove any loose dirt and dust from the surface. Don't forget to rinse the alloys and be thorough! Once the easily movable dust and dirt is rinsed off the car, you can begin washing using the safe washing method.
The safe washing method is remarkably simple but will require some effort to do correctly and perfectly consistently. It's based on a few simple principles; in particular, these principles are:
Using light pressure on the paint reduces the chances of causing damage, and moving the wash mitt in straight lines reduces the chances of seeing any damage.
Most of the contaminants on a car are at the bottom, so washing from the top down reduces the chances of picking up anything that could damage the paint. It also makes it so if you do pick up something that could damage the paint, that there is less paint that is likely to be damaged.
Before touching the mitt to the paint, pick up as much soapy water as possible and saturate the paint with it; this will act as a lubricant between the mitt and the paint, reducing the pressure required and lowering the chances of marring the paint with the mitt.
Wash one section of the car at a time. You'll need to look at the car and break it down into roughly 1 meter by 1 meter sections of paintwork. You'll make these sections up in your mind and will need to apply the top-down method twice since you ought to start making up sections at the top of the car, then wash each section in turn top down.
After you wash a section, submerge the whole mitt in the soapy water. Rub the mitt on the grit guard to dislodge any trapped contaminants within the mitt. Make sure the mitt is fully loaded with soap, ready to saturate the next section.
Once the car is washed, rinse thoroughly with running water.
The rinseless wash is a far more expensive method of washing your car. It relies on polymer technology rather than traditional soaps and requires some reading to understand. Expect to pay around £140 for a rincless wash setup including a 5-gal bucket, gamma seal, grit guard, optimum no rinse, pressure sprayer, drying towel, and a highly specialised sponge. It will also require an appropriate washing technique and requires more skill to do safely when compared to a traditional wash.
There are many options to get your car clean; the most well-known is the automatic car wash for a couple of quid, followed by the traditional hand car wash for about a tenner. If money is less of an issue, then you can visit the valeters for about £40 to clean the exterior and expect to pay another £40 for the interior. If money is no problem you can send your car to a detailing shop, your car should look brand-new when you get it back but you can expect to pay north of a grand for this. Read on to learn more.
Automatic car washes are cheap and convenient, the manned ones are generally a little better than the fully automatic ones you typically see behind the petrol station, but both will leave fine scratches.
It's hard to make comments on hand car washes as a whole since the quality of each car wash differs so much. Some hand car washes use brick acid on alloys to clean them, while others will use safer iron fallout removers. The old adage of you get what you pay for comes to mind.
Look up reviews for your local hand car wash before visiting, you can also have a look on Google Maps at their operation: Are they operating out of a glorified gazebo or a proper building?
Valeters can also vary in quality. Some hold accreditations with the companies they get their products from, like Autoglym or Autosmart, but by far the best valeters hold an IDA Certified Detailer Certificate. Some valeters are based at a central location while others have vans and will come to you, your workplace, your home, etc. Valeters typically offer a wide range of services at a wide range of costs. It's always worth looking up reviews and looking at price lists typically found on their social media or websites.
Detailing shops ought to hold accreditation with the IDA and typically offer the highest possible quality services. Most will have pre-made packages, usually something to the effect of: car wash, full decon, polishing, more polishing, and some sort of paint protection, typically a ceramic coating.
This will typically cost more than £1000 and will raise dramatically with wet sanding, re-spraying, full paint protection film, or interior protection coatings, which can add up to over £5000.
There's very little that detailing shops can do that you can't learn to do yourself. Know that doing it all yourself will take many weekends to learn. As a start, I would recommend reading Automotive Detailing in Detail by Dom Colbeck and visiting detailingworld.co.uk to learn more.