How to Properly Clean a Kid’s. Car Seat (2025)

Car seats are location for a lot: each traffic-induced meltdown, each spilled juice box, each roadworthy travel nap. Most importantly, they prevention lives. But while it’s tempting to dainty them for illustration immoderate different portion of kid cogwheel erstwhile messes strike, they’re not conscionable different point you tin flip successful nan wash. They’re precision-built information devices, and 1 misstep tin discuss nan parts designed to protect your child.

This guideline walks you done really to decently cleanable a car seat, what not to do, and erstwhile to telephone a master truthful your kid stays protected, nary matter really messy nan thrust gets.

For more, cheque retired our guides to the Best Car Vacuums, Best Hand Vacuums, and Best Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products. For circumstantial babe cogwheel recommendations, cheque retired our guides to nan Best Baby Monitors, Best Breast Pumps, Best Strollers, Best Travel Strollers, Best Bassinets, and Best Baby Carriers.

Why Proper Car Seat Cleaning Matters

A speedy flip successful nan washing instrumentality whitethorn look harmless, but it tin ruin a car seat: “It could degrade nan harness webbing itself, truthful it could weaken it,” says Kyndra Webb, a kid rider information technician coach and personnel of nan National Child Passenger Safety Board. A harness is nan only point betwixt your kid and physics successful a car crash.

Aggressive cleaning aliases instrumentality washing tin besides shrink aliases distort covers, aliases portion distant protective coatings. “A batch of them person occurrence retardants,” Webb says. “The much you lavation it, nan much you degrade immoderate of that information quality.”

Even cleanable cleaning techniques tin beryllium undermined by 1 deceptively difficult step—putting everything backmost together. “The biggest point that I person seen erstwhile families travel for a car spot cheque aft they've washed it, particularly if they bought their car spot used, is they're not assembling it correctly again,” Webb says. A car spot whitethorn look pristine and moreover beryllium decently installed, but if nan harness is routed incorrect aliases nan clips aren’t successful place, it’s not doing its job.

That said, nan stakes are excessively precocious to helping it. By sticking to nan book of due cleaning guidelines and shaper instructions, your spot tin beryllium some sanitary and road-trip ready.

How to Find a Car Seat Manual

Before you moreover deliberation astir reaching for those cleaning supplies, break retired your car seat’s manual. If you can’t find nan booklet that came pinch nan seat, you tin apt find it online: Visit your car spot manufacturer’s website, hunt for your circumstantial model, and look retired for links branded “Manual,” “Instructions,” aliases “Support.”

The cleaning guidelines are past usually recovered successful a dedicated conception of nan manual. "Some car seats moreover person QR codes now, truthful you tin scan nan codification to bring you correct to their website’s FAQs and their help,” Webb says. “Sometimes it'll moreover bring you to their YouTube channel."

If each other fails, interaction customer service. “A batch of nan manufacturers person kid rider information technicians connected staff,” Webb says. “They cognize their car seats, they cognize their products.” They’re nan experts who tin supply circumstantial guidance for your model.