Whether you are using your car for long drives, adventures, carrying heavy materials or for family trips, seat covers easily become grungy. As in any lifestyle activity, hygiene is important to secure and changing your car’s seat cover is a part of your auto-hygiene.
You might say an upholstery cleaner will do it but how about when your seat cover chips or torn? What if your kids will suddenly chew on these chips? Changing your seat cover does not only ensure the convenience of your passengers but it also ensures their safety. With these, the question is, how often must car seats changed?
Is There a Standard Period for Changing Car Seat Covers?
Essentially, car seats only last for five to seven years after they were factory manufactured. As a matter of fact, you can check the expiration date of your car seats in the car manual. You must put into mind that just because car seats last this long, car seat covers should be held this long too.
Generally, car seat covers according to most auto-repair shops must be changed at once in every one and a half years for maintenance or of course as the need arises like when there is already peeling, foul smell or fading colors. In changing weather conditions, molds might easily sneak up in the edges of the car seat covers staining the covers and making them less hygienic.
There are many reasons to change seat covers but mostly because of car maintenance like protecting the car’s original upholstery and extending the life of the car seats themselves.
Nevertheless, for more aesthetic purposes like changing the car’s original interior or adjusting the seating comfort of your passengers, you may change your car seat covers as frequently as possible but you have to choose very well the car seats apt for your car’s model, age and seat style. Hence, part of changing the seat covers is also choosing what fits your immediate car needs better.
What Fabric Should You Use?
Choosing between fabric or leather covers is often the dilemma. Fabric car seat covers are beneficial maintenance-wise or aesthetically speaking. Given its different textures and patterns, it will give your car a more fun look plus it does not easily tear or wear out. Moreover, fabric has greater resistance to temperature change thus, your car seat will not be too hot to seat on when it is summer and not too cold to rest on during winter.
On the other hand, leather seats could be beneficial too. In terms of maintenance, leather seat covers are easier to clean since you could just wipe the dirt or dust out plus it does not easily stain and when it does, the stain will not be too obvious. Lastly, on a car sale perspective, cars with leather seat covers tend to have higher resale value than cars with fabric seat covers.
Regardless, changing of car seat covers need not be at a frequent basis but must be observed regularly, which is essentially once in every one and a half years. Whatever reasons you have in changing your seat covers, be it for maintenance or aesthetics, you need to know your car and what fits in it for you to make your car seats an asset.