We receive lots of calls from customers asking if we can remove a coffee stain from a car seat.  That all depends on the situation, how long the stain has been present, and if the stain has permanently changed the colors of the carpet or upholstery fibers.  Some stains come out, and some don’t.  The photo below shows the front passenger seat of a Honda Accord.  This customer is beginning her career as an Uber driver, so she wanted us to perform an interior detail to get the car presentable for her customers.  The stains that are present are from a coffee spill.  It looks like several coffee spills!  And actually, it doesn’t look like she made any attempt at all to clean up the coffee spill.  The car is a 2013 Honda Accord.

The first step that we always do is to thoroughly vacuum the area.  If you look closely, you can see that there is a lot of pet hair present as well.  To help remove the dog hair, we use a Fur-Zoff Pet Hair Removal shown in the picture below.  Simply use the tool as a brush and gently scrape up the dog hair.  It is a great tool and it usually removed 80 to 90 percent of pet hair.  It’s a must-have tool for any detailer.  Here, you can read more about the pet hair removal tool.

Our third step is to spray the affected areas with our highly concentrated carpet and upholstery shampoo.  It’s a high pH low foaming concentrate.  After spraying the area we let it sit for a few minutes so that it can soak down into the stain and help break apart the coffee that has been embedded into the seat.  The photo below shows that process.

The next step is to steam clean and lift the coffee spill to the very top of the surface.  To do that, we use a vapor steamer.  Our vapor steamer heats water to 320 degrees and has a triangular brush attachment that the hot steam escapes from.  This makes it very easy to agitate the surface and break down the coffee while bringing it to the top of the seat for easy extraction.  We make a couple of passes with the brush, and then we begin to extract immediately while the upholstery seat is still hot.  Look at the photo below to see how we go about that.

The final step is to extract the seat.  We use a Mytee HP60 heated carpet extractor.  It heats water to 210 degrees and injects it into the very top of the surface.  The vacuum on the machine is very powerful and it sucks the dirt, grime, and coffee up into the machine.  This is another excellent tool and is yet another must-have for any professional detailer.  I took the photo below to give an example of how it works so you can see the difference it makes.  The photo just shows one pass.  It definitely makes a difference!!

Below is another picture that shows the difference the Mytee hp60 makes with heat extraction on a car seat.

Below is the finished seat after the pet hair removal, upholstery shampoo, steam agitation, and hot water extraction.  The customer was thrilled and this method is a proven way to remove embedded coffee stains from upholstery seats in automobiles.  Thank you for reading, and try not to spill coffee in your car!  If you do, you know who to call remove a coffee stain from a car seat.  Thanks again!