What car detailing should cost in Staffordshire

The short version

A proper mobile valet in Staffordshire starts around £84 and runs to about £95 for a large, neglected vehicle. Machine polishing starts around £249 and runs to £599. A full correction plus ceramic coating is £599 upwards. Anything advertised far below those numbers is a different job wearing the same name.

Why a £15 wash and a £84 valet are not competing

A roadside hand wash is fifteen minutes, shared buckets and a brush. It is not a rip-off — it is a genuinely different product, and for a car that is simply dusty it is fine.

What you are paying for at £84-plus is time and method: wheels and arches done first with their own buckets, a pre-rinse and foam to lift grit before anything touches the paint, a contact wash with clean mitts, then the interior. Two to three hours rather than fifteen minutes. The difference shows up over years, in whether your paint has swirl marks in it.

What actually moves the price

Size, first. A large SUV has roughly twice the panel area of a supermini and takes correspondingly longer.

Condition, second, and it matters more than people expect. A car cleaned every month is a straightforward job. One that has not been touched in two years, with baked-on bird lime, tar and a boot full of dog hair, can double the time.

Then travel. We publish a starting price on every town page rather than quoting one figure for the whole county. Operators advertising "no travel charge" have built it into the headline price instead, which means the customer five minutes away is subsidising the one twenty miles out.

Reading a quote properly

Ask what preparation is included, particularly for anything called a coating or a polish. "Ceramic coating £120" almost always means a wash and a spray sealant.

Ask whether the price is fixed or a starting point, and what would move it. A detailer who has seen photographs of your car should be able to give you a firm figure.

Ask what happens about water and power. A lot of mobile operators expect a hose from your outside tap and a lead through a window, which rules out flats, terraced streets and workplace car parks. We carry our own of both.

And be wary of a quote given without any questions at all. Nobody can price a car they know nothing about.

Is the expensive one worth it?

Sometimes not, and we will say so. If your paint is sound and you want the car clean, the full detail is the right buy and the correction work is money you do not need to spend.

Where the money does earn its keep is machine polishing, because that is the only thing that removes swirls and haze rather than hiding them, and it is permanent. A car that has been corrected once and then maintained properly never needs it again.