Are Car Seat Covers Worth It? Here's 6 Reasons To Buy Them

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While I’m not a big fan of car seat covers, I have to admit that there are a few great, objective reasons why you might want to buy them for your car. In this post, I’ll show you all the benefits of car seat covers and why I think it’s worth installing them inside your vehicle.

6 Reasons Why Car Seat Covers Are Worth It

Car seat covers are worth the money, no doubt about it. Here are six reasons why you should consider buying them.

1. Car Seat Covers Protect Fabric and Leather Seats

Whether you have cloth, leather, or a combination of both, the car seat covers will fit all of them and give them a protective layer. There are thousands of ways you can ruin your stock car seats, and fixing them can be both expensive and hard.

Car seat covers to protect everything beneath. With seat covers installed, even after five or ten years, your stock car seats will still be in like-new condition because they weren’t exposed to any external factors that usually damage them.

2. Plenty of Customization Options

The car seat cover is a very big market, and there is a tremendous amount of factories that are making seat covers. The stock car seats aren’t always the prettiest option, and sometimes they look really ugly. It can be because of general design or just because of their color.

Of course, if you are buying a new car, you can choose between a few colors and types. But still, you are pretty limited with the options. With car seat covers, there are millions of different colors, types, and patterns you can choose from.

3. Covering Damaged Car Seats

Car seat covers are great if you have some minor, even major, damage on your seats. Using a seat cover is probably the cheapest option to “fix” severe seat damage.

Of course, it won’t be a final solution. If you don’t have a big budget at the moment but still want your seats to look fresh and new, buying a seat cover is a great option.

However, using car seat covers to hide some damage will only make sense if the seats are ripped off, there is cigarette damage, and similar.

If your seats are damaged a lot, and the sponge has started to tear apart, it’s better to buy some used seats.

4. Fully Customized Seat Covers

Most of the time, you will find universal car seat covers that fit almost every car. Still, many people don’t want just a universal seat cover, especially detailers and car tuners.

Luckily, there are tons of companies that are making fully customized seat covers. You just drive your car to them to take measurements of the seats and other parts (handrest, etc.) and tell them what style you want.

That’s a great option for every car lover, and you can make your car stand out from the crowd with these.

What’s even better, the choice of seat cover type is great – you can choose cloth, leather, a combination of both, etc. Check the MRKUSTOM official site and see what they can make – not only fully customized seat covers but the whole car interior for your car.

Besides fully customized seats that will fit your car and be 100% fit for your car, there are also some websites where you can get customized seat covers with your logo, image, etc. The size is universal, but you can choose between many designs. Check this Etsy shop to get a better picture of custom car seat cover designs.

5. Easier to Wash and Maintain

The full leather seats don’t fall into this category, but the combination of leather and cloth, or the cloth seats only, are pretty hard to wash and maintain.

Sometimes, when I clean dirty car seats, it takes at least one hour to clean them with some carpet cleaner and a brush and then a few more hours to dry.

On the other side, cleaning car seat covers is much quicker. You just have to take them out of your car and put them in your washing machine. Most of them are washable.

That’s great because you can use the car the whole time, and it typically doesn’t take a lot of time to wash and dry them, especially if it’s a sunny and windy day outside.

That’s the reason why I said that they are also easier to maintain than the stock car seats. You only need a few hours to wash and dry them, and you can use the car the whole time.

6. It’s Easy To Replace Seat Covers With a New Ones

This is probably the best part of car seat covers. It’s easy to replace them. Just take the old ones out and install new ones. You can do it in under an hour.

After washing car seat covers a few times, they probably won’t look like new again – same as some clothes. Then you shall get new ones.

Also, if they get too dirty, just throw them in the trash and get other ones. It’s not an expensive thing, so there is nothing to worry about.

And the third most common reason is that you just want another color, design, or type. As I said, there are millions of designs, and someday, you might want to change the inside look of your car. With car seat covers, it’s a piece of cake.

How Car Seats Become Damaged

Let’s see the most common ways the seats are damaged. If you belong to one of those categories below, consider buying yourself a car seat cover.

Having Kids

We all know that kids are unpredictable, and often, they will spill some juice, chips, or something on your car seats. I always allow kids to drink and eat in my car, and I’m aware of the damage they can do, but hey – they are kids. 😉 With the car seat cover, they will be less likely to damage your stock car seats.

Having Pets

Even though I like pets (especially dogs) a lot, I don’t like driving any pets in my car, and I never do it. There are just too many ways they can damage my car – from hairs, saliva, nails, to bad dog odors in cars. However, with some seat covers, the chances of damaging the car seats and other interiors will reduce a lot.
Also, there are some specific covers for dogs, and they are much different from general car seat covers. Check out this Dog Back Seat Protective Cover below.

Driving a Taxi

If you are a taxi, Uber, or Lyft driver, or you often drive a lot of people in your car, you should also consider buying yourself a car seat cover.
I’m an Uber driver beside my job (police officer), and I know what a struggle is when riders sit wet on my seats or spill some beer, and there are even drunk girls vomiting on my seats. It’s a PAIN.
With car seat covers, it’s much easier to clean all the mess, and I know that there is very little chance that my stock car seats will suffer any damage.

Hobbies

Many people have some hobbies. For instance, I like going saltwater fishing. And yes, I always put my gear in the car trunk, but many times, I’m dirty from all the rocks, sand, water, baits, etc.
If you have some similar hobbies, it can even be football. You may be dirty after the game and just ruin your seats.

Job

I’ve got a friend who’s a construction worker, and his car is really hard to maintain, even though he has full leather seats. He damaged them a lot and is now thinking of a cheap way to fix them. If he had some car seat covers, he would just have to replace the seat covers and have “new” seats again.
If you work in a similar type of job, I would recommend you buy some car seat covers.

About Car Seat Covers

If you have never had seat covers, you should also read this part to check some additional information that I want to share with you.

What Types of Car Seat Covers Can You Get?

I already said this, but let’s repeat. There are only two types of car seat covers, and we can divide them into those categories:

Universal seat covers – fit 90% of the cars.
Custom seat covers – covers made to your needs. They can be semi-custom or fully customized.

What Materials Are Seat Covers Made From?

There are a lot of different materials used for car seat covers. Let’s see them:

Velour – it’s the basic material choice for seat covers. They are very similar to the original upholstery, and many times, you don’t even realize that the car has seat covers. This material is good and comfy, but it’s not waterproof and very durable.
Jacquard – very similar to Velour, but it’s rougher and heavier than the velour type of material.
Canvas – they are the most durable type of car seat covers. It’s the best type for public transportation since they are very rough and waterproof. However, it’s not good for family cars since comfort isn’t the best.
Neoprene – Neoprene is a great fabric for all seat covers. It’s like a multi-purpose seat cover. Those seat covers are very durable, waterproof, and very comfortable.
Leather Look – these seat covers are the easiest to maintain. They are very popular with taxi, Uber, and Lyft drivers. It won’t soak any liquids. However, just like leather seats, they can get very hot during the summer and very cold during the winter.
Denim – denim seat covers are more like high-end seat covers. They are made of high-quality denim filled with foam, making them soft and smooth.
Mesh – they are similar to Velour in quality but have very good air ventilation, which is great for those who live in hot climate towns.
Sheepskin – I would call this a luxury seat cover. It can be very expensive to get those. The best thing about sheepskin is that it’s durable and cold during the summer but warm during the winter.
Acrylic Fur – it’s a synthetic material that’s used to copy the sheepskin. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the good temperature properties as the real sheepskin. However, they are much cheaper than sheepskin seat covers.

How Much Do Car Seat Covers Cost?

The prices of car seat covers may vary a lot, depending on the type and material you would like to buy.

The prices of the car seat covers are anywhere from $15 to a few hundred bucks. Usually, the universal sets are between $40 and $150.

What’s great about car seat covers is that whatever budget you have, you’ll find ones that suit you. There are seat cover sets for as low as $20. For instance, a few months back, I bought a 5 piece set for $15 only. These aren’t the best quality, but they will serve you well enough.

On the other side, if you want more classy and high-end car seat covers, you’ll have to spend some more money. However, even those aren’t too expensive. You can get a nice set on Amazon for ca. $200.

And in the end, there are fully customized car seat covers that can cost a fortune. Those are only for real car lovers who want all the best for their cars. With these customized seat covers, you can also get many other parts changed, such as the handrest, door handles, etc.

Final Words

There are many other advantages of car seat covers, but these were the top 6. I hope that you now have a better picture of how car seat covers can improve your car and make your life easier.

And the best thing is that they are very affordable, except for the fully customized ones – but they will last you much longer.