Dashboard & Trim Wipes

Dust first with a dry cloth or a soft brush, because dragging grit across a grained plastic is what puts fine scratches into it. Then use a water-based, silicone-free wipe in overlapping passes, working into the grain rather than across it, and reaching the base of the windshield where dust accumulates most. Do not dress it afterwards. A dashboard that has been cleaned properly should look like a dashboard, not like a mirror.

You can, and each of them costs you something. Dish soap is alkaline and strips over time. Vinegar is acidic and dulls textured plastic. Furniture polish is silicone with a fragrance — instant shine, permanent dust magnet. Baby wipes, which are the most common substitute, leave an emollient and surfactant film that goes tacky in the sun. If the only choice is between a household product and nothing, plain water on a microfibre cloth is the safest of them.

Because gloss on a dashboard is a defect disguised as a feature. It reflects into the windshield in low sun, it transfers to anything that touches it, and being tacky it holds dust so the surface looks worse within days. It also does nothing for the actual failure mode, which is UV-driven plasticiser loss. We do formulate a high-gloss version when a customer’s market demands it — we simply do not make it the default and we say what it trades away.

It slows the mechanism, which is the honest claim. Dashboards craze because UV and heat drive plasticisers out of the polymer, so a UV absorber in the film left on the surface genuinely reduces the dose reaching the plastic. What it cannot do is reverse damage already done, and no product can — a chalky dash has already lost the plasticiser. Regular use from new is worth far more than heavy use later.

Gloss black trim is the hardest surface in any modern interior, because it shows every fibre and every swirl. Our formulation will not streak on it, but the technique matters: one wet pass, then an immediate dry buff with a clean face of the wipe. For customers whose vehicles are heavy on piano-black we specify the lower-lint 50 gsm substrate used on our glass wipes instead of the standard 45 gsm.

They can, and plenty of brands ship one SKU for both. The reason we separate them is the finish specification: an interior wipe has to be safe on fabric and rubber as well, which limits how much UV absorber and film-former you can carry, while a dashboard wipe is optimised for one material family and can do more for it. If you want a single SKU, we will build the interior formulation — it is the safer general case.