Five steps to clean pet fur from your car

Your pet is your best friend – but their fur? That's another story. Pet hair gets into and onto absolutely everything, from your clothes and couch to your carpet and all over your car. Worse, removing pet hair can be frustrating and laborious. You can vacuum it up for what seems like forever, and then still – more appears, especially when we’re talking pet hair in cars. It’s often stubbornly intertwined with your cabin upholstery and carpet.

So what's the solution? Thankfully, it doesn't have to be travelling without your pet. Follow these steps and you'll banish fur with minimum frustration and maximum success.

While the vacuum isn't a magic bullet, it will help you start from the cleanest base. Wipe down all hard surfaces before vacuuming fabrics, trim and carpets thoroughly, you want to get rid of the free-flying hair – and other dirt – so you can focus on the pet hair that is properly ingrained in your car, and therefore, harder to remove.

Fabric softeners contain chemicals that break the static bond between a hair and fabric, making fur easier to remove. Simply mix a little fabric softener with water in a spray bottle, then spray the solution onto your upholstery. Using paper towel, wipe down the solution in one direction before vacuuming up the clumps that have formed. Make sure you dilute the fabric softener sufficiently to avoid damaging or discolouring your cabin's delicate trims. Approximately seven parts water to one part fabric softener is recommended, and you should test in an inconspicuous area first.

Now it's time to grab something else with magic hair-removing qualities – rubber. Rubber gloves are a good place to start. Simply put them on, run them over your upholstery – again, in a single direction – and static energy will lift the hair and cause it to either stick to the gloves themselves or be easily clumped for vacuuming. If this doesn't remove all pet hair, try wetting the gloves or spraying the trim lightly with water and repeating. A rubber squeegee can be used in much the same way.

By now your upholstery and trims should be mostly fur-free but there might be the odd strand still ingrained or in hard-to-reach places. For this kind of final clean-up, bring out the lint roller or wrap some duct tape inside-out around your hand and start dabbing the spot in question until the hair comes up and sticks to the tape. Replace and discard the tape once it fills with hair or loses its adhesiveness. For more focused attacks, wrap the tape around individual or grouped fingers.

Just as you want to wash a car top-down, leave your carpet until last – this will ensure that pet hair dislodges and falls to the floor when you're cleaning your upholstery, and it won't have to be cleaned up twice. The pile in carpet is particularly prone to trapping hair, so you might need to use something stronger than gloves or a squeegee.

Using a rubber brush, for example, is one way to agitate the carpet fibres sufficiently. Spraying a pumice stone with diluted fabric softener, then rubbing it on the fabric, rinsing it off in a bucket of water and repeating, is another. For spots you can't reach with a brush or stone, try dabbing the area with the coarse side of a Velcro strip. All methods, however, can damage the pile if you're too vigorous, so be gentle and test on an inconspicuous area first.

^Disclaimer

^{Viva Energy Australia Pty Ltd (“Viva Energy”) has compiled the above article for your general information and to use as a general reference. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken by Viva Energy in compiling this article, Viva Energy does not warrant or represent that the information in the article is free from errors or omissions or is suitable for your intended use.}