How To Fix Cigarette Burns in Your Car

Cigarette burns are a serious problem for your car’s upholstery. Not only do these burns ruin your seat upholstery’s appearance, they can also grow over time. If left unrepaired, cig burns will make your vehicle look disheveled, reducing its resale value. Fortunately, you can repair a cig burn yourself.

Repairing Cigarette Burns in Your Car

Not all upholstery is made of the same material. Some seats use fabric for their upholstery, others are leather, and some are vinyl. Each material requires a different approach to remove a cig burn.

Fabric Seat Upholstery

Many car seats use fabric in their upholstery. Unfortunately, fabric burns when it touches hot cigarette ash. If the fabric contains synthetic material, it can melt from the heat.

Thankfully, you can remove the cigarette burn from fabric using a common household ingredient: mayonnaise. Rub some mayo over the burn mark and leave it alone for several minutes. The sauce loosens burnt and melted fabric, allowing you to remove the residue with a wet cloth.

Scrape the rest of the cigarette burn mark off with a sharp tool. Use that cutting tool to remove a piece of fabric from beneath the seat. The patch must be big enough to fit over the cig burn and match the pattern of the undamaged fabric. Apply fabric glue on the patch, place the fabric over the burn, and let the adhesive dry.

If the burn goes through the entire fabric, you cannot fix the damage. You might have to replace the entire upholstery.

Leather Seat Upholstery

Leather seat upholstery requires you to cut out the burned part and repair it with leather filler. These steps can vary depending on how deep the cigarette burn is.

If the cig burn completely penetrated the leather, you must cut through the upholstery. Slip a canvas cloth behind the leather, keeping the cloth insert flat and overlapping the edge of the hole. Apply glue and push one side of the hole down to raise the opposite side. Smear glue onto the bottom edges of the hole and press the part down. Wait for the glue to dry before proceeding to the leather filling step.

But what if the cig burn fails to penetrate the leather upholstery? Remove the burned part by slicing a cross into the burn, ensuring the cuts go half as deep as the leather. Next, cut the damaged leather out around the edge.

Apply a thin layer of leather filler in the hole of the upholstery. Dry the filler with a hair dryer for three minutes before lightly pushing the layer down. Repeat this process twice before applying a fourth and final layer of leather filler. Use a leather touch-up kit on the final layer to help the patch blend into the undamaged parts of the upholstery before drying it.

Repairing leather upholstery takes considerable time and effort. You must exercise patience if you want to return the upholstery to like-new condition.

Vinyl Seat Upholstery

Similar to leather, cut around the burned vinyl with a sharp tool. Slightly increase the hole’s size to get additional material from the upholstery. Take patch material from a vinyl repair kit and put the vinyl cut-outs on the patch. Then, cut out the patch and fit it over the burn hole.

Smoothen the area around the treated area with fine-grit sandpaper before wiping it clean with rubbing alcohol.

Instead of glue, you can use an iron to bind the vinyl patch into the hole. Set the iron to low heat and slide it over the patch to fuse the vinyl fibers.

Reweaving Cig Burns in Your Car

Reweaving is a method of fixing cigarette burns in the fabric upholstery of your car seat. It’s simple and cost-effective, only requiring thread, needles, and scissors.

Furthermore, reweaving uses the original upholstery of the seat to remove the cig burn. You can keep the existing upholstery instead of replacing it with a new cover. Thus, it’s the preferred method for removing a cigarette burn from the antique fabrics of classic cars.

You start the reweaving process by cutting away the melted edges of the cigarette burn. Trim the damaged area until it looks neat and plain.

Weave around ½ an inch away from the edges of the burned area. Use a thread that matches the fabric of the car seat upholstery.

Tie the thread at both ends to finish over the burned area. Repeat the reweaving process until you fully cover the burned area.

Repairing Cigarette Burns With Glue

Some car seat upholstery is made of flimsy fabric like velour. If you try to reweave the delicate material, you might damage it. Instead, you can join the fabric with an adhesive to remove the cigarette burn.

Cut a small unseen portion of the car seat to use as fuzz. Apply a drop of glue to the cigarette burn. Next, use the pointy tip of an object to push the fuzz into the cigarette burn. Avoid touching the glue.

Using a Cigarette Burn Repair Kit

Last but not least is the cigarette burn repair kit. It contains the parts and accessories that you’ll need to fix cig burns.

Trim the cigarette burn with a sharp tool, such as scissors or a razor. Don’t trim the undamaged part.

Next, shape a foam cushion into a plug that can fill the hole made by a cigarette burn. Cut a piece of fabric from underneath the car seat upholstery and sew it around the foam plug. Stitch both ends of the plug to keep the foam inside it.

Fill the cig burn hole with the foam plugs. After filling the hole, cover it with the remaining fabric. Use the appropriate glue to attach the fabric cover to the seat upholstery.

Once the glue completely dries off, clean the repaired area and the rest of the upholstery. Your car seat should look like new again.