How to Get Pen Ink Out of Car Seat

Ink in upholstery

This is the front passenger headrest of a Toyota Corolla. This customer has children that like to use an ink pen and draw lines across the headrest. Unfortunately, the customer didn't know how to remove the ink so we came to help. We used a combination of using a chemical reaction, shampooing, steam cleaning, and hot water extraction. Read along and we'll show you how we performed the ink removal from the car's upholstery seat. I think you'll like the results!

Goof Off

Goof Off has been proven to be a great way to loosen and dissolve ink from surfaces, and using it as an ink remover on seats is no different. It can be bought at Lowe's or Home Depot. It can help remove some of the toughest stains and spots as well. In this case, we used a small amount of the product on a microfiber towel and applied it to the upholstery headrest. The product is very strong and I suggest wearing some latex gloves and possibly a nose mask because it has a strong smell, too. Always use the product in a well-ventilated area.

Cleaning upholstery

Goof Off has been applied to the microfiber towel and after wiping back and forth for a minute or so, all of the ink appears to disappear. Looking at the cleaning side of the towel, there was no ink visible. This meant that the ink really wasn't removed; it was dissolved into the upholstery. We didn't like the fact that the ink was still in the upholstery, and the chemical was also inside. So we took it a few steps further to make sure the ink and Goof Off were totally removed.

Upholstery Shampoo

Looking at the photo above, it looks like the ink was gone, but, the towel was clean, too. We sprayed some of our upholstery shampoos onto the "clean" headrest. This product is a high Ph, low foaming carpet, and upholstery shampoo.

Steam cleaning upholstery

We use a vapor steamer to help dissolve dirt and bring it to the surface to remove stains and ground-in dirt of upholstery and carpeting of vehicles. After spraying the shampoo, we used the brush head on the steamer to agitate the ink and Goof Off to bring it to the surface. The steam reaches a temperature of 320 degrees so it definitely gets the job done. With this too alone, I believe that we could have gotten 75 percent of the ink out of the headrest by bringing it to the surface.

Extracting car upholstery

We use a Mytee HP60 heated carpet extractor. It injects water into the upholstery fibers that reach 210 degrees and then sucks it back out. This process is called hot water extraction. We do this immediately after steaming the surface, making the extraction process easier with better results. As can be seen from the photo below, the results are fantastic! We might have taken the long road to obtain these results, but we feel it was the best road to take for maximum results to remove the ink from the upholstery.