The paint feels rough
Run the back of your hand over the bonnet after a wash. Gritty means bonded contamination, which needs decontamination rather than another wash.
That is the clay bar and iron decontamination territory.
For most cars in San Francisco, a full detail two to three times a year with regular washes in between is the honest answer. Not monthly, not once when you sell it.
The two things that actually move that number are where the car sleeps and what rides in it. A garaged commuter car can go twice a year comfortably. A car parked outside near the ocean carrying a dog and two kids wants four.
Every detailer has an interest in telling you the answer is more often. Here is how to work it out for your car instead.
Find the row that matches your situation. If two apply, take the more frequent one.
| Your situation | Full detail | In between |
|---|---|---|
| Garaged, commuter, no pets or kids | Twice a year | Wash every 3 to 4 weeks |
| Street parked in the city, no pets or kids | Two to three times a year | Wash every 2 to 3 weeks |
| Street parked near the ocean (Sunset, Richmond, Pacifica) | Three times a year | Wash every 2 weeks — salt is the reason |
| Dog rides regularly | Three to four times a year | Interior vacuum weekly, hair blade in the door pocket |
| Kids, car seats, food in the car | Three to four times a year | Interior wipe-down every couple of weeks |
| Rideshare or delivery work | Every two to three months | Interior wipe daily, wash weekly |
| Weekend or rarely-driven car | Once or twice a year | Cover it, and wash before and after storage |
| Ceramic coated car | Interior on your normal schedule | Maintenance wash every 2 weeks; the coating does the paint work |
"Full detail" here means our Full Package — interior and exterior in one visit — from $279 on a sedan. "Wash" means a proper hand wash, not an automatic tunnel.
People assume a detailing schedule tracks how much you drive. It mostly does not. Paint damage is overwhelmingly about what lands on the car while it sits, and a car sits far more than it moves.
Bird droppings are acidic and start etching clear coat within hours in sun. Tree sap does the same thing more slowly and is much harder to remove once it has hardened. Industrial fallout — the iron particles from brake dust and rail traffic that make paint feel rough — lands on a stationary car and starts corroding into the clear coat.
In San Francisco there is a fourth: salt air. Anywhere with a sea breeze, which is a lot of this city, gets a fine salt deposit that holds moisture against the paint and accelerates everything else. That is why the outer neighborhoods get a higher recommendation than the ones on the bay side, and it is not a sales line — it is the same reason boats need more looking after than tractors.
So the mileage question is the wrong one. The right one is: does the car live under cover, and if not, what lands on it where it lives?
Run the back of your hand over the bonnet after a wash. Gritty means bonded contamination, which needs decontamination rather than another wash.
That is the clay bar and iron decontamination territory.
When rain sheets across the paint instead of balling up, whatever protection was on there has gone.
Bare clear coat is what everything else attacks.
Fine circular scratches visible in low sun or under a streetlight. They come from washing, and they do not wash out.
See the swirl marks guide.
Uniform dullness rather than visible dirt means soil is in the fibre and a vacuum will not reach it.
Extraction, not another vacuum.
You adapt to your own car's smell within a minute. Noticing it means it has grown past the point where adaptation covers it.
Different job with a different goal. There is a whole guide on this one.
A ceramic coating does not reduce how often the car needs washing — that is the most persistent myth in this business — but it does change what the wash has to achieve. Contamination sits on the coating rather than bonding into clear coat, so a maintenance wash removes what would otherwise have needed decontamination and polishing.
In practice a coated car parked in San Francisco wants a maintenance wash roughly every two weeks and does not need the decontamination-and-protection cycle that an uncoated car needs a few times a year. That is where the value is: not fewer washes, easier ones, and no re-waxing.
The interior schedule is unaffected. Coating is paint protection and does nothing at all for your carpets.
One warning: automatic tunnel washes and harsh alkaline soaps are the two fastest ways to shorten a coating's life. If you have paid for a coating, that is the habit to change. There is more detail in the coating maintenance guide.
Tell us the neighborhood, whether it is garaged, and what rides in it. That is enough for us to give you a straight answer, including "you are fine, come back in six months", which we say more often than you would expect.
If it is due, the Full Package covers both halves in one visit from $279 on a sedan.
More short answers live on the FAQ.
The services this guide is about:
Back to the full guide library.
That beats monthly done badly. Tell us where the car parks and we will tell you what it needs.