Drying Aid Guide

Summary: Why is a drying Aid beneficial for your drying process? How does it prevent marring?

Do you always need to use a drying aid? No*!
Let’s take a deep dive into what a drying aid does and why using one still is beneficial.

A drying aid mostly does two things, one is acting like a waterless wash to make it safer to go over the paint with drying towel in case you missed a spot. The second benefit is quickly adding extra beading or other things your main protection does not offer. Some drying aides e.g. provide slickness.

Now do you always need a drying aid? No, if you are 110% sure you left no residual dirt on the car before drying it is not compulsory, you can then go straight to drying if you like, especially on a coated car. However there is little reason to do so, a drying aid will always give you a better experience.

Why is a drying aid beneficial?
One is the added safety, the second is that especially when you use a product that also has some protection that gives the paint the freshest beading, which in turn makes drying especially with twisted loop style towels much easier.

What can you use for a drying aid?
You can use most spray sealants, quick detailers, waterless washes and rinseless washes as a drying aid. The first two contain sealant properties, the latter two (mostly) do not. Both can be benefical depending on your situation (e.g. wanting bare paint before you apply a long lasting protection is always a great use case for a rinseless/waterless as a drying aid).
You can also use a Rinseless wash as a drying aid even if you used a regular soap before as a contact wash.

What if you want to use a blower to remove most water from my car before drying? Even then a good drying aid can greatly improve your experience in drying the spots the blower does not get to.


What should I check for when choosing my drying aid?
The first question is if you want added protection at all or not. If you do want protection and have a long lasting protection already on the car make sure the protection in the drying aid is compatible.
Checking with the products manufacturer is important, or seeing well tested combos in trusted places. There are some products that can negatively affect your long term protection, both by masking it and by chemcially degrading it, so make sure what you use is compatible.

What makes a drying aid prevent scratches to an extent? If you have remaining dirt on your car, a drying towel will act just like a wash mitt or a cleaning towel during the wash process, it will take in the dirt and rub it all over the car. As with the wash step in general that is a bad idea, because this rubbing of dirt over the car produces the scratches and the marring. Waterless washes, quick detailers, Rinseless washes and even spray sealants have components in them that can encapsulate and emulsify dirt to point, making that much safer.

Note: This has very clear limits and especially if you do a no rinse wash make sure to remove all bigger debris as gently as possible (e.g. stones, twigs, …) as these are too substantial to be affected by that.