The Science Behind Car Wash Microfiber Towels:

Why They Are a Car Wash Favorite

Microfiber cleaning cloths are a great way to dry off excess water, remove dirt and debris, and complete any detailing process on your customers’ vehicles at your car wash. In recent years, car wash microfiber towels have become very popular and have replaced cotton, nylon, and other blended material towels for cleaning and detailing vehicles.

What Is Microfiber Made Of?

Microfiber is a man-made, artificial material that uses synthetic materials, such as polyester, polyamide, or a mixture of a few different materials. As the name suggests, the fibers in the towels are micro-sized and very small.

During production, the fibers are split, so they become about 200 times thinner than a strand of hair. Each little fiber works together to attract dust, dirt, and debris as each fiber is negatively charged. The fibers’ micro size also makes the fibers in the towels much more absorbent than other types of towels.

How Does Microfiber Cloth Work?

If you remember back to your science fair project where you took magnets and pointed them at each other, you should remember that negative and positive charges attract each other. In contrast, two positive charges or two negative charges repel each other.

Dirt, debris, dust, and water tend to have a positive charge. Therefore, since the fibers in car wash microfiber towels are negatively charged, it attracts the positively charged dirt, debris, dust, and water.

As you wash or dry the vehicle, any particles on the vehicle’s surface with a positive charge are drawn into spaces in between each of the very tiny microfibers. As a result, vehicles are much cleaner when dried and detailed with microfiber cleaning cloths.

In fact, if you were to wash, dry, and detail one side of a vehicle with a microfiber cloth and the other side with a cotton cloth, you would see a noticeable difference.

Are There Different Types of Microfiber Cleaning Cloths?

There are three different types of microfiber car wash cleaning towels that come in a wide range of colors and sizes. The difference has to do with the pile heights of the microfibers, which are small, medium, or tall. Ideally, you should use all three different types at your car wash for washing, drying, and detailing vehicles, as they each have their own useful purposes.

Short Pile Microfiber Towels

When microfiber towels have a short pile, the towels will feel a bit stiffer compared to medium and tall pile microfiber cloths. Short pile car wash microfiber towels are well-suited for use on non-sensitive surfaces like interior doors, plastic trim, and dashboards.

Medium Pile Microfiber Towels

Medium pile microfiber towels are a bit softer than short pile cloths. You will want to use medium pile microfiber cloths to clean windows, apply and remove car wax, and apply Armor All products.

Tall Pile Microfiber Towels

The softest microfiber towels have a tall pile. They are perfect for use on more sensitive areas of the vehicle like the car’s exterior finish. Since the microfibers are taller, they are superior at water absorption for drying off the vehicle.

Another useful application for tall pile microfiber is to buff the vehicle. The tall fibers ensure all dust, dirt, debris, and water has been removed to leave a sparkling finish your customers will appreciate.

In addition, you can use tall pile microfiber cleaning cloths to wash vehicles by hand or to hand wash specific areas like the rims on the car. You only need a small amount of car wash soap to help loosen up the dirt as the negatively charged microfibers will take care of attracting positively charged dirt particles into the cloth.

Why Are Microfiber Cleaning Cloths a Top Favorite of Car Wash Owners?

By now, it should be fairly obvious why car wash owners love using car wash microfiber towels—it is because of their superior cleaning ability and water absorption! Not to mention, they are better suited for ensuring sensitive areas of the vehicle do not get scratched—like the exterior paint or those expensive black carbon rims.

To give you an idea of why microfiber towels are better, let’s consider cleaning cloths made from cotton or other materials. Traditionally, these types of cleaning cloths are designed to work by absorbing water and the car wash soap to create a lubricating layer to remove dirt, dust, and debris.

However, instead of absorbing the dirt, dust, and debris into the fibers like microfiber, they remain on the surface. So the cleaning towels have to be rinsed frequently. Otherwise, the dirt particles will just be pushed around and continue to have contact with the surface. As a result, the dirt could create scratches in the clear coat and exterior finish on vehicles.

Conventional towels do okay when it comes to absorbing water, but once they are fully saturated, they will not absorb any more water. With microfiber towels, thanks to their tiny fibers, the towel can be wet but will continue to absorb most of the water off the vehicle.

Additionally, microfiber towels only require a small amount of car wash soap, wax, or other car detailing products. The science behind the microfibers allows them to require small amounts of these materials while still delivering superior results. So, you end up saving money on your car cleaning products too.

Therefore, it should now be perfectly evident why car wash owners perfect microfiber cleaning cloths over other types of cleaning cloths.

How to Clean Microfiber Towels

The best way to clean microfiber car wash towels is to wash them in hot water. You should wash the towels separately from other cleaning towels, uniforms, etc. You also do not need a lot of laundry soap to wash the towels.

In cases where the towels are only lightly soiled or were just used to dry the vehicles, you do not even need laundry detergent. The hot water alone is effective at removing the dust, dirt, and debris from the towels.

Never use liquid fabric softeners during the wash cycle to ensure the microfibers retain their negative charge. In addition, fabric softeners can leave a coating over the microfibers reducing their overall effectiveness at attracting dust, dirt, and debris and absorbing water.

Microfiber towels should be hung up and air dried since they dry fairly quickly. However, they can be dried in a dryer using the “air only” setting so that only cool air is used to dry the towels. Do not use dryer sheets, as these will leave a coating on the microfibers, reducing their effectiveness.

By caring for your microfiber car wash towels correctly, you can reuse them numerous times before you need to replace them.

How to Save Money on Car Wash Microfiber Towels

The best way to save money on microfiber cleaning cloths for your car wash is to purchase them at wholesale prices from Superior Car Wash Supply. In addition, we offer a wide range of different sizes, colors, and types of microfiber towels.

Explore our selections of car wash microfiber towels in our online store or contact us at 800-554-9274 today! We sell a wide variety of car wash accessories, vending items, vending machines, car wash supplies, and parts also at wholesale prices.