Interior Protection for Oconomowoc, Wisconsin

From our shop

About 25 minutes

Price

Quoted

Applied

Before the season

Target

Sunscreen on leather

What sunscreen does to a seat

Sunscreen is an oil-based emulsion carrying UV filters and, in many formulations, dyes and fragrance. On skin it is designed to stay put. On a leather seat it transfers on contact, soaks into the topcoat, and holds dirt against the surface.

On light-coloured leather and vinyl the result is a yellow-brown shadow on the seat base and the bolster that appears over a hot week and does not clean off, because the oil has gone into the topcoat rather than sitting on it. It is the most common permanent mark we see on Lake Country interiors, and it happens to well-kept cars driven by careful people.

Cloth is different but not better: sunscreen oil in cloth fibre attracts and binds dirt, and a summer of it produces a grey seat that extraction improves and does not fully recover.

What protection changes

A leather coating puts a sacrificial layer between the sunscreen and the topcoat. The oil sits on the coating, where it can be cleaned off, instead of soaking into the finish where it cannot. That is the entire product, and on a lake vehicle it is worth more than on almost any other.

Fabric sealant does the equivalent for cloth: it changes the fibre surface so oil and water bead rather than wicking in. A wet swimsuit on a protected seat leaves a damp patch that dries. On an unprotected one it leaves lake water in the foam.

Before the season, on a clean seat

Protection goes on after a proper clean and before the exposure, which on a lake vehicle means May. Applied after the season it preserves whatever the summer did.

Booked with an interior detail in late spring, it is the visit that decides whether a light interior survives the summer.