People are concerned about when they should clean their car or how frequently they should clean it. Everybody loves his/her. Wherever you go, you want to go with a clean and shiny car. Either you pay hundreds of bucks to the professional to get it cleaned, or you do it yourself spending hours.
Whatever the case is, you want a good look. Apart from giving it a good look, cleaning is crucial to a car’s good condition.
But overdoing it can also be harmful to your car. For example, it might create swirl scratches or just damage the paintwork that is quite sensitive.
That’s why you need to know how frequently you should clean your car.
How Frequently You Should Wash Your Car
Well, you can wash your car every week or on a monthly basis. However, it depends upon several other factors. Whether you would do it weekly or monthly will correspond to the following conditions:
Factors That Decides When Should You Clean Your Car
Weather
This is one big condition. You are likely to get different answers concerning how frequently you should wash your car if you ask two persons who live in two different regions with different weather.
The kind of weather that you are exposed to can determine how frequently you should wash your car. You need to consider the intensity of heat, cold, heavy rain, salt, and acid rain in the region where you live or drive.
Location
Weather is only one aspect of your location. There are also many things to be considered for your location. For example, you might live in an industrial area where pollution is likely to be more. The area, let’s say, is full of trees. The roads are decorated with tree lines. Or maybe you live in a sea area where dust is a big problem.
Frequency of your drive
Another determinant is the frequency of your drive, that is, how much you usually drive your car or how much distance you usually drive a day. For example, your office might be quite far from where you live.
How You Park the Car
Environment effects are likely to take place depending upon where and how your park your car. Do you park it in a closed store? Or on the street? Or any open place where it is exposed to dust and other harmful environmental effects such as UV rays.
Color/appearance of your car
It’s also necessary to know how you want your car’s appearance to be. Some people really like showroom finishes. They are always concerned about the glossy look of the car all the time. For some people, just a clean car would do fine, showroom finish is not necessary.
When to Clean Once in a Week
Now that you know what factors determine how frequently you should clean your car, you need to know when you should wash your car weekly and monthly basis. You should wash your car weekly only when you are exposed to these conditions.
Bird Feces:
If you live in an area where there are plenty of trees all around it, you are likely to be exposed to bird droppings/feces. And if this is the case, you surely will want to wash your car as quickly as you can.
Pollution:
The more a car gets exposed to pollution, especially air pollution, the more frequently you should wash your car. If you live in an area where the air is quite polluted, you should consider cleaning the car at least once a week.
Heat:
A great magnitude of heat can really wear out your paintwork, for example. It quickly destroys the effectiveness of the wax that you used to protect against high exposure to the sun. So, if you are living in a desert area, for example, where the heat is more than in most places, you should consider washing your car once a week.
Frequent Driving:
You may need to drive quite often. Maybe your office is somewhat far from where you live. You need to drive a long distance, say, daily. This exposes your car to more dust, dirt, pollutants, bugs, etc. In that situation, it’s better to wash the car at least weekly.
Rain:
You may even consider washing your car more than once a week If you live in an area where it is highly exposed to heavy and frequent rain. Or maybe the rainy season is going on. Rain traps dirt and dust in the hard-to-clean areas also.
Once/twice a Month
You may not need to wash your car weekly. The fundamental principle here is that the less your car is exposed to getting dirty, the fewer times you wash it. Washing your car once/twice a month is OK under the following conditions.
Less Used: It’s quite obvious that if you use your car less, you don’t need to wash it more frequently. Maybe your car, most of the time, stays in a closed store where it is less exposed to dirt and other environmental effects.
Mild Weather: If the weather in your place is not very extreme, your car is less exposed to dirt and dust. Moderate heat and rain will get your car less exposed to dirt and dust.
Simply put, if your car is not frequently exposed to all those conditions for a weekly wash, you should not really bother much. Washing the car once or twice a month would do just fine.
When Should You Wax Your Car
So far, only the things about the cleaning of your car have been said. But waxing your car is a different yet important issue to keep in mind. Waxing is crucial to keeping your car glossy and attractive.
Waxing creates an extra layer of protection, keeping the paint secure from contaminants. For example, a waxed surface can easily slide the dust off. It can give good protection against sunburn.
You should wax when you see that you can’t do the cleaning job only by applying soap or water. Waxing twice a year is considered to be standard practice.
When to Clean Cleaning the Interior
What has been discussed so far is only about cleaning the exterior of your car. So you might wonder “what about the interior of my car?”. Well, cleaning the interior part clearly depends on you. You can do it whenever you feel like doing it.
The thing is you should clean it up when you see any dirt inside your car. You may have spilled your coffee on the seats. You should clean it up as soon as possible.
Hence, use a car wash brush to clean corners inside your car.
Final Words
Buying a car is probably the second big investment for many people. So, of course, anyone who owns a car would want to take good care of it.
Whether it’s about always maintaining a perfect look or just usual maintenance that is crucial to the car’s good condition, you need to clean your car timely. Now that you know when to wash your car, we hope, you will treat your precious car quite perfectly.