Deal with the interior first and the paint second. The interior is where the previous owner's smell, stains and hair live, and those are the things you will notice every day.
For the paint, the sequence is decontaminate, assess, then protect. Do not commit to correction or a coating until you have seen what is actually under the previous owner's last wash.
A used car is somebody else's habits, and most of them are removable. This is the order that removes them efficiently.
Every surface, a proper vacuum including under the seats and in the rails, glass, leather cleaned and conditioned, and a deodorize. This is where you find out what the car actually is — a used car often looks worse after the first honest clean than before it, because the dirt was hiding the damage.
If there is a smell, it has a source: carpet padding, seat foam, something under a seat, the cabin filter or the air-conditioning evaporator. Treating the air without finding the source buys you a fortnight. The odor guide has the diagnostic sequence.
Stains and embedded grime need hot-water extraction rather than a surface clean. $25 per seat or carpet area, capped at $125 on a sedan or midsize and $175 on a large vehicle.
Embedded hair does not vacuum out. $75 on a sedan, $100 on anything larger. This one is worth doing properly once rather than discovering it in the seat seams for the next two years.
Not a detailing job and it costs very little. On a used car it is very often the reason the ventilation smells, and it is the most commonly skipped step.
Iron removal and a clay bar. Only after this can you see what the paint actually looks like, because contamination and old filler polish both disguise the condition.
With clean, decontaminated paint in front of you, the correction question becomes answerable. Not before.
Two things routinely mislead people about a used car's paint in the first week.
The first is bonded contamination. Years of embedded iron, fallout and tar make paint look dull and feel gritty, and both of those read as 'this paint is worn out'. Frequently it is not — a decontamination brings back gloss that had nothing to do with polishing.
The second is filler polish. Cars are often prepared for sale with a glaze or filler product that temporarily hides swirl marks. It washes out over a few weeks, at which point the swirls reappear and the new owner assumes they caused them. They did not.
So the sensible order is decontaminate, wash, then look at the paint under a torch at night. What you see then is the real condition. If it is swirled, correction is the answer; if it looks clean, save the clear coat and just protect it.
This also matters for a coating. A coating locks in whatever is underneath for two to five years, so applying one to a used car before you have honestly assessed the paint is an expensive way to commit to somebody else's swirl marks.
Sedan pricing. Start with the base and add only what the car turns out to need.
| What | Price | When |
|---|---|---|
| Full Package (interior + exterior) | $279 | Always. This is the baseline reset. |
| Odor treatment | $50 | If there is any smell. Find the source first. |
| Seat / carpet extraction | $25 each, capped $125 | Visible stains or gray, flat carpet. |
| Pet hair removal | $75 | If a pet clearly rode in it. |
| Iron decontamination + clay bar | $125 | Almost always worth it on a used car. |
| Leather protection | $45 | Light-colored leather, or leather that feels dry. |
| Headlight restoration | $100 the pair | Any yellowing at all. |
| Paint correction + protection | Quoted | Only after decontamination, and only if you are keeping the car. |
For most used cars the honest reset is the $279 Full Package plus decontamination and whichever interior add-ons the car turns out to need. The correction-and-coating conversation is better had a month later than on day one.
The interior work is where the day-to-day experience of the car lives, and none of it depends on decisions you have not made yet. The paint decisions get better once the car is clean and decontaminated and you can actually see it.
Tell us it is a fresh purchase when you book. We will look for the things that turn up on used cars specifically — damp carpet, filler polish, a filter nobody changed.
More short answers live on the FAQ.
The services this guide is about:
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Interior first, paint second, decisions third. We will tell you what the car actually needs once it is clean.