Compare

Interior deep clean or full refurbishment?

Name: JetRefined
Address: Atlanta, GA, US
Telephone: (770) 999-9740
Price range: $$$

Clean it first. Always. A great many cabins that read as finished are only dirty, and a deep clean worked material by material brings most of them a long way back. Refurbishment is the right answer when the material itself has failed — leather worn through at the bolster, lacquer polished off a veneer, foam collapsed, carpet down to its backing. These are two different purchases, not two sizes of the same one. Decide in that order.

The short answer

Deep clean first, every time — then decide about refurbishment with a clean cabin in front of you. The exception is material failure: when the leather, the veneer or the foam has actually gone, cleaning only delays the conversation you should be having with a completion center.

compared with
	Interior deep clean	Full refurbishment
What it changes	The condition of what is already installed. Soil, film, staining and odour come off; the materials stay.	The materials themselves. Leather, carpet, veneer, plating and soft goods come out and new ones go in.
Method	Eleven material types, each with its own chemistry and procedure. Test somewhere hidden, then work panel by panel. Crew-days, not man-hours.	Strip out, remanufacture to a design, burn-test the new materials, reinstall with the paperwork to match.
Downtime	A night to a few days, on your ramp or in your hangar, worked around your schedule.	Weeks out of service, plus lead time on materials and testing before the aircraft is even called in.
The deciding test	Clean a hidden panel and compare it with the one you touch every flight. If the hidden panel comes back, the cabin is dirty.	If the contact area cannot reach the color the hidden one does, the finish is gone there and no clean closes the gap.
How long it holds	Until use puts it back. A cabin in regular service is better kept on a cycle than rescued once a year.	Years. New materials reset the clock and the wear starts again from new.
Regulatory weight	No new approvals. The constraint is product choice: nothing the material, or the cabin air, cannot accept.	New interior materials must meet the flammability rule in the aircraft's certification basis, with test evidence on file.
Cost	Quoted against a written scope — cabin size, material mix, condition and deadline. Never against a price list.	A different purchase entirely: materials, design, testing and records, quoted by a completion center, before the cost of the weeks out of service.
Resale	Removes the easy discounts. Grime and odour read as neglect, and a buyer prices neglect into everything else.	A documented new interior is a real record on the aircraft, and it is your taste rather than the next owner's.

A cabin is eleven materials, not one surface

Gulfstream's own completion center handbook gives cabin cleaning a chapter to itself — Chapter 12 — and inside it there are separate procedures for wood, granite, Lexan, vinyl laminate, plating, stainless steel, leather, vinyl, Aermat rubber, carpet and fabric. Eleven materials, eleven methods, written by the people who built the cabin. It is specific about why that matters: the urethane wood finish is non-absorbent, so it has to be cleaned before every third polish or the polish builds up, and a silicone-based household polish — the handbook names Pledge — leaves an oily residue that can prevent a later repair to that finish. Treat a cabin as one surface and you get one result across eleven problems.

Why a clean usually gets further than the owner expects

Most cabins that look finished are carrying years of accumulated residue rather than wear. Dull leather is usually a film. Grey carpet is usually soil held in the backing. An odour is usually a source nobody has reached rather than the cabin itself. The catch is that the quick methods are the damaging ones: aggressive cleaning of seat covering materials and carpet can strip the fire retardant out of them, beater-bar vacuuming does the same, heat-drying carpet above 100°F shrinks it, and spotters containing trichloroethylene or MEK have no business aboard an aircraft. Worked slowly and correctly, the same cabin comes back a long way.

The honest limit is material failure

Cleaning restores condition. It cannot restore a material that has gone. Leather with the finish worn through at the bolster and the armrest edge will clean up and still read as worn, because the color layer is no longer there. Veneer polished past its lacquer does not come back with more polish. Foam that has collapsed is a seat you sit into rather than on, and no amount of upholstery attention fixes that. Carpet worn to its backing is finished. If you want a quick test, clean a hidden panel and compare it with the panel you touch every flight. The gap between the two is the part cleaning cannot close.

What refurbishment carries that a clean does not

New interior materials have to meet the flammability rule in the aircraft's certification basis, and the shop has to hold the evidence. For transport-category cabins under 14 CFR 25.853 that means vertical burn testing to a 12-second or 60-second standard, average burn length limited to six inches, average flame time after the ignition source is removed limited to fifteen seconds, and smoke and heat-release testing where it applies. Lighter aircraft are certified to a different basis, so the applicable test depends on the type certificate rather than on the material. That paperwork is why the work goes to a completion center and why refurbishment downtime is counted in weeks — lead time on materials, testing, installation and records — while a deep clean is counted in days. A clean is not a smaller refurbishment. It is a different purchase with a different deliverable.

The failure mode of choosing wrong

Both errors are expensive, in different currencies. Commissioning a refurbishment on a cabin that only needed cleaning buys weeks out of service to discover the interior was fine. Cleaning a cabin whose materials have failed produces a clean, still-worn cabin and an owner who has paid to be disappointed. There is a third error, quieter than both: a cabin cleaned with the wrong chemistry. Silicone polish on wood before a repair, bleach taken aboard, household products chosen for speed. Every procedure in that handbook opens the same way, with an instruction to test somewhere inconspicuous first, because two fabrics of the same fibre content can behave differently.

What changes the answer

A sale changes it. Clean, present the cabin honestly, and let the buyer spend on their own taste rather than yours. Charter changes it, because a cabin in constant service holds better on a cycle than on a rescue. A heavy maintenance visit changes it, because interior work then spends downtime you have already committed rather than downtime you have to create. And there is a middle that suits a lot of aircraft: replace the carpet, which takes the hardest wear and dates a cabin faster than anything else in it, and deep clean everything around it. That combination changes how a cabin reads more than any other decision short of a refurbishment.

Choose when

The cabin is soiled and tired, and it carries an odour you notice on boarding. The materials are sound: the leather takes a color back when it is fed, the veneer still has lacquer on it, the seats hold you up. You have days, not weeks. You want to know what the cabin actually is before you spend on changing it. Clean first.

Choose when

The finish is worn through at the bolsters and the armrest edges. The veneer has been polished past its lacquer. Foam has collapsed and the seat bottoms out. Carpet is down to its backing. Or the cabin is sound and you simply do not want it any more. None of that is a cleaning problem, and a clean will only delay the decision. Talk to a completion center.

Questions we get on this

Will a deep clean get rid of the smell?: Usually, if the source comes out with it. Odour lives in carpet backing, soft goods, the galley and the lavatory, and it returns within days when only the surfaces were treated. We work the sources rather than masking them, and we do it with products the cabin air can accept. A smell that survives a proper clean is usually a soaked material that has to come out.
How do I tell dirty from worn?: Compare a high-contact area with a hidden one. Clean the inside face of a seat back or a panel under the divan, then look at the bolster and the armrest edge. If the hidden area comes back to a color the contact area cannot reach, the finish has gone there and cleaning stops being the answer.
Can we replace the carpet and clean everything else?: Yes, and it is the most common sensible middle. Carpet takes the hardest wear and dates a cabin faster than anything else in it. New carpet still has to meet the flammability requirement that applies to floor covering in your aircraft's certification basis, with the test evidence on file, so it comes from a shop that can supply that paperwork. We work the rest of the cabin around it.
What does a deep clean cost?: It is quoted against a written scope, not a price list: cabin size, material mix, condition and how quickly you need the aircraft back. It is measured in crew-days, not man-hours. For reference at our tier, a full interior and exterior on a midsize jet is a five-figure job before condition or a deadline is factored in.
We are selling the aircraft. Clean or refurbish?: Clean it. A buyer discounts what they can see and smell, and grime reads as neglect of everything they cannot inspect. A refurbishment started now is unlikely to be back before the listing, and it is your taste rather than the buyer's. Show the cabin in its best real condition instead.

Send the tail number, the airport and what is bothering you about the cabin — a smell, a dullness, a stain someone has already tried. We will tell you what cleaning will and will not reach, in writing, before anyone quotes you for new materials. If refurbishment is the honest answer, we will say so.

Get a quote (770) 999-9740

Request service

Want this decided for your aircraft?

Send the tail and the airport. We will tell you which way to go, including when the answer is the cheaper one.

Urgent or AOG? Call dispatch on (770) 999-9740 — faster than any form.

Aircraft

Airport

Needed by

No obligation. We quote against condition, access and your deadline.

Other decisions

vs Dry wash between trips, wet wash when the soil load is heavier than film. Neither one substitutes for the other, and that line is drawn by what each method removes, not by preference. vs Rinse-less, unless the ramp allows no water or the airframe carries nothing more than a dusting. It takes a wider band of soil and it is the gentler of the two when it is done to method. Dry wash is the right answer inside its limits and a poor one outside them. vs Coat paint you intend to keep. On paint already booked for the shop, wash it correctly instead and coat the new finish while it is perfect. vs Correct the paint only when the gauge shows the film can afford it; if a repaint is within a year or two, or the paint has already been polished more than once, live with the defects and protect what is left. vs Correct while the film is sound. Once the clearcoat itself is failing, polish is a delaying tactic and the repaint is the job you are actually buying. vs Maintenance is how you reach the repaint interval in good condition, not how you avoid it. If the paint is due, paint it.

All comparisons →