Starting a car detailing business in the UK

What it costs to start

You can start mobile for around £1,500–£3,000 with sensible second-hand kit, or £5,000+ if you buy everything new. The usual list:

• Pressure washer, water tank and hoses — £300–£900
• Machine polisher and pads — £150–£400
• Wet/dry vacuum and extractor — £150–£500
• Chemicals, buckets, microfibres, clay, tape — £200–£400 to start
• A generator or a van power supply if you're mobile — £200–£600
• Insurance — see below

What you legally need

• Register as self-employed with HMRC (or set up a limited company).
• Public liability insurance — £5m is standard, roughly £150–£350 a year. You are working on other people's £30,000 assets; this is not optional.
• Motor trade insurance if you drive customers' cars at all, even up a driveway.
• If you hold customer details — names, addresses, phone numbers — you'll likely need to pay the ICO data protection fee (about £52 a year).
• Check water discharge rules with the local council if you're washing on the street; run-off into a storm drain is an offence in some areas.

Mobile or a unit?

Mobile gets you earning immediately with no rent, but you lose time to travel and you're at the mercy of the weather and the customer's driveway. A unit costs £400–£1,200 a month and only makes sense once you can fill it — most people start mobile and take a unit when they're turning work away.

Your first ten customers

In order of how quickly they arrive: friends and family, local Facebook groups, a Google Business Profile, then the neighbours of every car you do. The last one is underrated — a detailed car sitting on a driveway is an advert that other people on that street can see.

Do the first few at a fair price, not free. Free customers refer other free customers, and you can't discount your way to a business.

The mistakes that cost the most

• Charging one price whatever the car — see our pricing guide; this quietly halves your rate on big jobs.
• No deposit, so no-shows cost you whole mornings.
• No website, so every enquiry has to be answered by phone while you're on a car.
• Buying a ceramic coating certification before you have a customer base to sell it to.
• Competing with the £15 hand car wash. You cannot, and the people who use them aren't your customers.

What to spend your first profit on

Insurance if you haven't. Then a better extractor, because interiors are where the profit is and where the difference shows. Then the boring stuff — a website that takes bookings, so you stop losing the people who ring while you're polishing.

DetailerHQ exists for that last one: a detailing site with online booking and deposits that you can build free and only pay for when you want it live. Worth having before your first advert, not after.