The Best Car Towels for Detailing Your Vehicle

If you’re doing a lot of detail work on your ride, sometimes a smaller car towel is a better choice. If that’s the case, the S&T Microfiber Cleaning Cloths offer a bargain alternative to a large, plush towel. Sold in packs of 25, 50, and 100, the S&T Cloths are made of 88-percent polyester and 12-percent polyamide fiber in a 200 gsm weave.

Each order is packaged with a balanced assortment of five colors of towel (red, yellow, green, orange, and blue), which can be handy if you’re performing intricate tasks with chemical cleansing agents, and don’t want accidental mixing. Assign a color to each detailing task, and keep your workspace safe and clean. Plus, with a big pack of towels, you’ll be less tempted to re-use that dirty towel just one more time—not when there’s always a clean car towel at hand.

Waffle weave towels are great at absorbing moisture, and do a very efficient job on big surfaces as a car towel. The Zwipes Auto Professional Microfiber Drying Towel features a medium size, deep waffle pockets, and soft finished edges with rounded corners.

Users report fast drying compared to traditional chamois cloths, and a streak-free shine on windows and chrome. Some users warned of early fraying, and suggested hand washing and air drying to extend product life. Even buyers who were dissatisfied with some aspect of the Zwipes, however, still praised the car towel’s absorbency and “awesome drying.”

CleanTools' The Absorber Synthetic Drying Chamois is a throwback car towel, engineered to emulate the classic deer-leather chamois drying towel. As such, it is a smoothly textured 17-inch by 27-inch rectangle of material that you drag across surfaces to absorb moisture, then wring out by hand, and return to the surfaces to absorb again.

The Chamois stretches as you use it, and can do a very good job of removing moisture if you use it properly. It is made of Poly Vinyl Alcohol (PVA) with sponge-like pores that use capillary action to absorb moisture. Users complain that the Absorber must be stored moist and used wet, or it may scratch surfaces.

For a truly classic experience for your classic ride, a step back in time to the original car towel might be the best. In that case, the Trainshow Cleaning Chamois Towel is a great choice. It is made of oil-tanned deerskin, a natural material that is soft when wet, lint-free, and easy to wring out. It is very absorbent and permeable, and can carry lots of water off of your car with each swipe.

Using a leather chamois towel is a bit of an art, different than using a fabric towel. You wring it out, then flatten it and drag it across a wet surface, leaving a dry, shining surface behind. Wring, flatten, and repeat. The chamois stretches as you drag it, after starting out at 20 inches by 31.5 inches (approximately) with irregular edges. Dry it in the shade, and soak and wring it out before each use.

When you’re really particular about your car towels, you will find yourself seeking out specialty towels for specific detailing jobs. Meguiar’s is a car detailing company that feels your pain, and so they make a variety of tools, including Meguiar’s Perfect Clarity Glass Towels. These 16-inch by 16-inch microfiber towels are designed as reusable cleaning cloths for automotive windows and other glass surfaces, both interior and exterior.

Meguiar’s claims that the Perfect Clarity is made of a special “weave that delivers the best streak-free results when cleaning automotive glass and mirrors both inside and out.” Handily color-coded in blue so that you know they’re for glass, the Perfect Clarity is sold in packs of three. Meguiar’s suggests pairing the Perfect Clarity Glass Towels with their Perfect Clarity Glass Cleaner for superior results, but any premium automotive glass cleaner should do.

When you detail your car, why not use the same tools and supplies that the pros use? That’s the idea behind Mothers Professional Grade Premium Microfiber Towels. These 16-inch by 16-inch towels are sold in packs of 12, appropriate for the home garage, or in packs of 144 (a gross), more suited for a professional detailing shop. Other than quantity, the towels are identical.

Colored a premium gold, they are made of a medium-weight 400 gsm material, 80-percent polyester and 20-percent polyamide. One side is long-nap for buffing, trapping, and holding dirt away from paint; the other side is short-nap for removing waxes and polishes from paint surfaces. The Mothers towels are lint-free and clear-coat safe, and have tear-away tags and edgeless corners.

Who doesn’t love a woolly mammoth? Chemical Guys, a prolific automotive cleaning supplier, knows that woolly mammoths are irresistible (even if they’re extinct), so they named their extra plush 25-inch by 36-inch microfiber towel after the adorable beast.

Order the original or new grey version, and you’ll get a scratch-free, lint-free, swirl-free towel that is highly absorbent and machine washable. Its fibers are spiral-split with a precise pattern which is said to enhance absorption. Composed of 70-percent polyester and 30-percent polyamide blended microfiber, the Woolly Mammoth is engineered for ultimate softness and durability. It has silk-banded edges to protect paintwork. Chemical Guys claims the Woolly Mammoth “can absorb over a gallon of water and dry an entire car itself.” Hope it stays away from the saber-toothed tigers and tar pits along the way.

Available in 14-inch by 14-inch or 16-inch by 16-inch sizes and sold in packs of 15, the HERKKA Microfiber Cleaning Cloths are plush, premium microfiber cloths that will do a great job as car towels at a reasonable price. They come in packs with five colors (black, grey, yellow, green, and blue), three towels of each, which is great if you like to assign specific towels to specific tasks to avoid cross-contamination of cleaning solutions.

The HERKKA towels are machine-washable and durable, and are made of 380 gsm material, which makes them thick and absorbent as well as plush and soft. Each towel has lined edges, so no worries about scratches or fraying. The 15-pack is a good size for the home garage—enough to get the job done with towels to spare, but without the investment, bulk, and storage issues of a pro-pack.

We have sung the praises of waffle weave, so when we found the Gryeer Extra Large Microfiber Waffle Weave Drying Towel, we were already interested. At 28 inches by 40 inches, the Gryeer is one of the biggest microfiber car towels on the consumer market. Not only is it waffle weave, it is also made of 400 gsm microfiber, thicker and heavier than normal, which should result in maximum absorbency.

Gryeer claims that each towel can hold eight to nine times its weight in water. Each towel has silk-banded edges to prevent paint scratches and swirls, an essential feature in a car towel. Though only available in grey, the color is light, not dark, and should highlight dirt so that you can avoid redepositing dirt on your car during drying and buffing.

Updated December 14, 2022: Removed Promoted Product recommendation.

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