Easy enough question. I was taught to wash a car when I was a teenager. Dad had sponges, soap, a bucket, water hose, and we dried the car with a chamois.
These days people detail cars. Whats the difference?
Detailing, like the name implies, involves a level of cleaning/polishing/drying/waxing that goes well beyond the average schmoe washing his car in a driveway.
You’re talking carpet extraction machines, q-tips on all the vent louvres and in small cracks and crevices, orbit buffing, all kinds of stuff.
The level of, well… detail.
What people call “detailing” varies, but for me it generally means getting down close and making sure every little bit of the car is clean. For example, using a toothbrush around the trim to get the in the gaps a larger cloth or brush misses. In the interior it’s things like using a cotton swab to clean the individual slats in the a/c vents and getting into all the small gaps around switches, etc.
As the name implies, it’s highly detailed cleaning. How detailed you get depends on how much time you’re willing to put in or pay for.
No wonder they charge so much. Q-tips and toothbrushes on a car is very detailed cleaning. I’ve never had a car detailed and didn’t know how deep they went in removing all the dirt.
thanks
each bug gets its own toothbrush.
The better detailers will even floss them.
Most detailers also strip the paint of contaminants, buff and wax the surface. Many also clean the engine bay and treat the surfaces inside. As you can see on Autopia or Autogeek, there are pro details that run a few thousand dollars.
This is usually done with a claybar treatment. Once you have a section of the car completely washed and wiped clean you take a piece of automotive detailing clay and some detailing spray and wipe the area again with the claybar. The clay picks up little pieces of contaminants like bugs, tar, pollen, that are stuck into the surface of the clear coat paint. You can see little black specks and yellow pollen stuck in the clay. It also strips the old wax off.
A fender that has been clayed is silky smooth compared to the untreated fender next to it. Smooooth. Then you apply new wax. Takes all day or even two to fully clean the car this way but you end up with a mirror-like finish. I do this once a year.
At the most basic level, detailing is washing and waxing, not just washing. It can go up from there.
Dunno if it’s true, but my Dad told me that “detailing” used to be what car dealers did before they delivered a car: made sure all the details were right. That meant re-painting any delivery damage, and fixing up things that had broken off, as well as just clean-polish-wax.
I know a guy who makes a living detailing cars. Everything is cleaned and shampooed. He makes a couple hundred bucks per car but its at least a 3-4 hour job. Maybe his work is the exception. Lots of return customers. And he does his work on-site.
Look and learn. More damn work than it’s worth IMHO.
Ignorance fought, I had heard the term detailing used before but assumed it referred to doing complex paint work on the body. I didn’t have a clue it just meant a thorough cleaning.
And at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum is my 2009 vehicle. Purchased new, it’s never been washed or waxed, often carries muddy kayaks on top, and transports our dogs every day. 
Which is what makes it nice to live in a world with detailers. I can pretty much never clean a car the entire time I own it and when I go to sell it, just drop it off at the detailers shop who collect their one time “slob owner fee” and suddenly it looks like some responsible person owned it!
When I was growing up (NE US 70s), detailing meant painting flames and stuff on the car. The current meaning makes a lot more sense.
Cool. Good to know.