Riding in Style

Whether you want to keep thieves from spotting something valuable in your car or you'd like to cut down on how often you use your air conditioner in the summer months, tinting the windows on your car will provide a lot of benefits for a relatively low price. But since the polyester sheets on the insides of your windows are significantly more fragile than glass, care must be taken to prevent chips and scratches. Fortunately, as long as you take these three tips to heart, you shouldn't have to get your tinted windows looked at by a professional again.

1. Make Sure All Your Seat Belts Are Working Properly

If you loosen a seat belt a little too carelessly before you get out of your car, its metal end could hit one of your windows just hard enough to cause a scratch in the tint. Therefore, it's important to always grasp the seat belt's strap tightly and guide it slowly toward its resting position.

But even if you're careful, a seat belt that moves too quickly because its retractor is malfunctioning will be very difficult to control. Instead of letting a problem with any of your seat belts slide, always try to diagnose the cause and see if you can address it.

2. Cover Sharp Edges With Fabric When You Need To Move Something

If one end of an object you want to store in your car is sharp enough, even a second of contact with the tint sheet on one of your car's windows could be enough to cause a tear. So before you put something with sharp edges into your car, always cover what's sharp with a thick piece of fabric. Just covering it in something thin like a plastic shopping bag won't be enough to blunt the force of an edge.

Don't just have the fabric on the object when you're taking it in and out of a back seat. Unless the object is bolted down, one sharp turn on the highway could cause it to slide toward a window.

3. Use A Microfiber Cloth Whenever It's Cleaning Time

It's easy to cause a tear in the window tinting if you press too hard with a normal washcloth or towel. This is because the thick threads on ordinary cloths have a tendency to dig deeply into surfaces too feeble to repel them.

So when it's time to clean all the dirt off of your window tints, use a microfiber cloth you ordered online or bought from a hardware store. Since the surface of the cloth is less rough, it'll be easier to move it gently across the length of a window tint in a slow and consistent manner.