Columbus, Ohio · Auto detailing
Clean is labour.
Not fragrance.
A detail is hours of work with an extractor, a machine and a light — not a scented spray and a vacuum. Below: what the work involves, the prices we publish, and the line where a detail stops and paint correction begins.
Interior
The part of the car you sit in. This is where the hours go.
Seats and carpet get shampooed and hot-water extracted, not sprayed and wiped. Vents, seat rails, the seam where the console meets the carpet, the crumbs under the child seat — that’s the part that takes the hours. Leather gets cleaned and conditioned. Glass gets done last so we’re not fighting our own overspray. Door jambs count as interior, because you look at them every time you get in.
Two limits worth naming. A stain baked into carpet over several summers may lighten rather than leave, and we say so when we see it, before the work starts. Smoke odour sits in the headliner and the cabin filter, and no single treatment lifts it out of either.
- Interior detail$200
- Interior detail$320
Published price · confirm w/ shop
Those are the two numbers we publish. Which one applies depends on the car and its condition. A commuter sedan is not a three-row with a dog in it. Call, describe the vehicle, and we will confirm the number before you drive across town.
Exterior
Wash, decontaminate, dry. What is under the dirt decides the rest.
Wheels and tires first, because they are the dirtiest part of the car and everything rinsed off them runs down over the paint. Then a hand wash — separate buckets, no spinning brushes. Then decontamination. Rail dust and brake fallout stick in the clear coat, and if the paint still feels gritty once it is clean, that is what you are feeling. It gets clayed off. Then dried with towels, not the sun.
There is no published exterior number, because it would not hold across vehicles. A two-door that lives in a garage and a work truck off a Trabue Road job site are not the same afternoon. Call with the vehicle and its condition and we will price it.
Where a detail stops
A detail cleans paint. It does not repair paint. “Scratch removal” sold inside a wash package is filler, and filler washes out.
Swirl marks, wash marring, etched water spots — those are cut out of the clear coat with a machine and a pad, under a light, panel by panel. That is paint correction: a separate job, with its own page and its own price. Rock chips are film, not polish. And a coating goes on last, over paint that is already correct, or it seals the defects underneath it.
The order
Most money wasted on a car is money spent in the wrong order.
- 01DetailClean the paint before judging it. A share of what reads as “scratches” is contamination that washes off.
- 02CorrectCut the swirls out now, while nothing is covering them. Paint correction.
- 03ProtectFilm on the front end, coating over the rest. Ceramic coating.
- 04MaintainTwo buckets and a wash mitt at home. Automatic tunnels with brushes are what put the swirls in.
The same order applies to glass: have the interior done before tint is installed, not after. Fresh film needs time to cure and should not be scrubbed while it does. Ohio tint law if that’s the next job.
Tell us what’s in the car.
Children, pets, spills, smoke — describe it. That is what decides which of the two numbers applies, and it is better settled on the phone than in the bay.
5220 Trabue Road, Suite D, Columbus, OH 43228