Things can take a turn fast — from Happy Holi to Holy Moly in a few seconds. If you’re the kind of person who hates a scratch on your car or you get angry with paint fades or discolouration, you’re not alone. During this festival of colours – Holi 2025 – if your goal is to keep your car safe and away from colours, here’s your guide.
Keeping your car safe this Holi — The most crucial step
If you don’t want colour stains on your vehicle, the simple and most effective way is to leave your car at home, and leave it covered. Use an alternate transport – carpool, train, metro, bus or another transport – and this will save a lot of work before and after Holi. If that’s not possible, here are other ways to protect your vehicle.
Keeping your car safe this Holi — Other methods before the colours
If there is no way to park the car and keep it under wraps, there are a few steps involved to protect the car for the big day. Start by giving the car a thorough wash and detailing. Once the wash is done, give it a coat of wax polish. Now, there are other suggestions – teflon coating, ceramic coating, or even PPF – but ignore all of them until you want to waste money. Just wax polish the car and you’re good. The wax acts as a protective layer – extremely effective – and if the car does get stains, it is easy to wash off.
For the interior, there is just one rule — keep the windows rolled up. Cleaning the interior is difficult and given the light colours carmakers use these days, and leather on various parts will make it nearly impossible to clean it. For the interior, just keep the windows rolled up.
The story is a whole lot different if you have a matte finish paint on your vehicle. Such paint surfaces cannot be washed with regular car shampoos and can not be polished either, as they will take away the matte finish and leave a shine, ruining the paint. For a matte-finished vehicle, the only sensible way is to leave it at home, covered.
Keeping your car safe this Holi — Got colour?
Well, if you did manage to get colour on your vehicle, the first thing to do is wash it — take it straight to a professional, or do it at home if you have a pressure washer. Do not let the car sit in the sun or wait too long. If the colours have any sort of chemicals, they will leave permanent damage on the painted surface and the sun will act as a catalyst to speed up the damage and permanent stain mark.
Now, if you did manage to wash, polish, and protect the car, you still need to wash it ASAP. Since the wax polish offers a protective layer, it becomes much easier to wash the car and remove colours. Usually, a power wash is more than sufficient. But let the experts handle it and post the wash, give it another coat of wax — this will keep the car protected for longer.
If it is matte paint, take it to an expert and take his advice. Matte-finished surfaces need a lot of care and attention and especially after having colour on the car, it needs expertise to bring it back to shape. That said, interiors too — let the expert handle it if the windows were down by any chance.
