Sweating the Details: How to remove pet hair from your car

Welcome to Sweating the Details, a limited series written by part-time auto detailer Matt Fink. In each installment, he educates you on how to maintain the visual appeal and proper condition of your ride. Want to read more? Click here.

For many pet owners, removing the animal hair attached to the seats and carpeting of their vehicle can be a major nuisance. A vacuum might seem like the perfect solution, but as you are probably well aware, it does not extract hair well—especially from the coarse, tough carpet that a lot of car manufacturers use on the back of seats and in the trunk.

As a detailer, I have tried a ton of solutions including a lint brush, packaging tape wrapped around my hand, and even special attachments on a hand drill. Finally, I decided to google “how to remove pet hair from cars” and test the top recommendations. There are a lot of products and home remedies, some of which look like they would be really great. But, as I tell myself every morning, looks aren’t everything.

To test the products, I used my 2019 Honda Odyssey, which my family and I recently used to take our cat to the vet. He’s a nervous shedder, and on the five-minute ride, a shocking amount of his fur got stuck in the coarse carpet of the truck. Here’s the back of my van after that single short ride to the vet, plus another run to pick up mulch:

The first step is to vacuum the area with as coarse of a hose attachment as you have. This pass will pick up the dirt, though it will probably leave behind most of the hair. I spent four minutes going over the van’s carpet as best I could with a good shop vacuum, and this was the result:

Even the best vacuums tend to only suck up the hair that is already loose. So, along with a vacuum, you need a tool to gather up the pet hair. Here are the seven ones I tested, ranked from last to first.

Seventh place: Balloon

Verdict: Terrible, and you look silly using it.

When you hold a balloon up to your hair, the strands will stick to it. But for this method to work in a car, the pet hair needs to be laying perfectly on top of the carpet. In that case, just use your vacuum.

If your pet’s hair is embedded deep in the carpet of the vehicle, like my cat’s was in my van, a balloon is useless: After creating some static, it may have picked up 5 percent of the hair on the section I tried.

Sixth place: Short rubber brush

Verdict: Don’t waste your time or money.

These are good for giving your pet a massage but awful for getting hair out of a vehicle. The rubber teeth just aren’t long enough to collect anything stuck in the carpet. On the section I tried, this brush removed about 10 percent of the hair. Maybe.

Fifth place: Grooming brush

Verdict: This isn’t just ineffective; it can actually cause damage to your car.

A pet hairbrush from a pet store seemed like a good idea, at first. The pointy teeth did okay when it came to removing hair in the trunk’s liner, removing about 50 percent. What hair the brush didn’t catch it actually embedded further into the carpet. Worse of all, the metal teeth pulled at the coarse fabric on the seat backs.

Fourth place: Wet rubber gloves

Verdict: At least it doesn’t cause permanent damage.

I had high hopes for the wet-rubber-glove method, and at first it seemed to work. Using the glove, I was able to clump some hair together, allowing me to vacuum it up. However, the glove didn’t remove enough hair—only about 60 percent—and what remained was wet and even more difficult to vacuum.

Third place: Lint roller

Verdict: You’ll never get it all.

Lint rollers are designed to get hair off clothes, so these hand-held devices do well with any strands that are not stuck too deep into a carpet. If you roll one back and forth—and waste a ton of tape—you will probably remove about 70 percent of the hair in your car.

Second place: Chemical Guys Pet Hair Rubber Brush

Verdict: Worth every penny.

You can buy this pet-hair removal brush from Chemical Guys today for $8.99. I have used the same one for more than 15 years and am still getting great results. By alternating the direction in which I’m brushing, I have always been able to remove 100 percent of the pet hair on a vehicle’s carpets.

However, just because I had found something that worked didn’t mean a better product wasn’t out there. So I purchased a Lilly Brush.

First place: Lilly Brush

Verdict: A new champion.

I had heard other car detailers talk about this brush, but I was skeptical that such a basic design would do anything. However, I picked one up for $14.95 and followed the instructions, using short strokes to pull the hair into piles that could be easily sucked up by a vacuum. I was blown away. I had cleaned all the hair off the back of a seat in 30 seconds—half the time I spent with the Chemical Guys brush. The Lilly Brush required less effort to use, too.

The winner is clearly the Lilly Brush, but I strongly recommend either it or the Chemical Guys brush. From now on, I will use both: the Chemical Guys brush, to dig into the carpet fibers and stir up loose dirt, and the Lilly Brush to truly get all of the pet hair.

Removing pet hair from your ride is easy—if you have the right products. Despite what you’ll read elsewhere, the best methods don’t use liquids, tapes, or static electricity. In my experience, none of the home remedies are worth the time and effort, either. I have found only two options to be worthwhile, and they are each small, simple, and affordable. With one of them and a good vacuum, you’re set. Just pack your patience.

Let us know in the comments what pet hair–removal tools or techniques have worked for you. And no, this article is not sponsored; as with every installment of Sweating the Details, it’s just free consumer advice from your local part-time auto detailer.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.