How To Clean a Football Helmet? A Complete Guide

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A football helmet is an essential piece of equipment for you to protect your head, jawline and face from severe injury or concussions. As a football player, you have to wear the best-fitted helmet without considering its expenses. Because in some cases, a cheap helmet can’t protect your head from high impact as the helmet is made with low-quality material.

You are continuously running and jumping, which creates excessive sweat while playing football. As a result, the helmet forms bacteria from sweat. Often it also contains blood or skin cells. Gradually these bacteria grow inside your helmet because the interior is wet and warm.

This bacteria causes skin irritation, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), staph infection, bad smell, and many other diseases. You have to know how to clean a football helmet to avoid all the skin diseases.

Just make a mixture of soapy water with detergent and clean water, wet a soft cloth into the mixture and wipe your helmets outside and inside thoroughly. Then dry the helmet for reuse. That’s all.

Let’s dive into the article to know the detailed procedure on how to wash a football helmet.

How to Clean Football Helmet

Before jumping into the main discussion about how to clean football helmets, let’s introduce some football helmet cleaner tools.

• A piece of cotton cloth or microfiber pad to a toothbrush

• Visor cleaning spray

• Non- abrasive or mild cleanser. Such as

1. All laundry detergent
2. Eucalan Lavender
3. Natural liquid laundry detergent

• Disinfectant spray. Such as

1. ProGld helmet cleaner and deodorizer
2. Anti3 disinfectant deodorizing spray, etc.

You can make the process of how to clean and polish a football helmet really easy by following some strategies. And the strategies are removing the chin strap, ear pads, and visor (if removable) before going to the primary helmet cleaning process. It makes the cleaning process more effective and easy. Then you have to start cleaning from the outside.

How to Clean The Outside of a Football Helmet

You should start cleaning your helmet from its outside. The outside of the helmet mostly touches with impact and blows, so it gets dirtier than the inside. The football helmets outside cleaning processes are

• The first trick is to remove all the miss, soil, clay, and grass with a soft cotton cloth that adheres to the helmet.

• Then make a mixture of soapy water with mild detergent and warm water. After that, wet the cloth into the soapy water and wipe it down outside of the helmet.

• Finally, take a dry cloth to rinse the water to make it dry.

How To Clean the Inside of a Football Helmet

You will find the availability of different types of football helmets in the market. Some football helmets contain removable pads, where some include non-removable pads. Depending on the padding system, the helmet cleaning process also varies.

How to clean up a football helmet with removable pads

Let’s see how you should clean the inside of a helmet that has removable pads.

1. First, take out the pads or air bladder from the helmet.

2. You can use a mixture of warm water and natural liquid dish soap to wash the helmet inside. Wet a soft cloth or microfiber pads into the soapy water and gently wipe all the inside of the helmet. Never keep an inch of space unwiped. 

3. Now make the helmet dry with a dry paper towel.

4. You can machine wash the ear pads or use the same mixture of soapy water.

5. Then keep both the helmet and pads in your backyard garden to make them air dry.

6. After the pads are completely dry, put a disinfectant spray to kill bacteria. When the helmets come to dry, you can re-insert the pad.

How to wash a football helmet with non-removable pads

Most wide receiver helmets have non-removable pads. And this helmet cleaning process is slightly different than removable pads. Let’s see the process.

1. Take a microfiber or soft cotton cloth. Then take some warm water and mix liquid gentle dish soap with the water to wet the fabric thoroughly.

2. Clean the interior and the gap between the pads with wet cloths. Wipe out the helmet inside with clean water to take out the soap.

3. Now choose any disinfect spray to kill the entire bacteria inside the helmet.

4. Keep the helmet on a plain surface to make it dry. Don’t keep it under extreme sunlight because the sunlight may degrade your helmet’s pad.

5. Non-removable pads are sensitive to temperature. It expands in high heat or cool temperatures. You should balance air to adjust fittings after cleaning and drying your helmet.

How To Clean a Football Helmet Chin Strap

The chin straps are the worst dirty parts of the helmet. You frequently clog the straps and remove them during playing by touching them with your hand, so it gets the soil clay and other dirt. As a result, you will find many stubborn stains on the straps.

1. Firstly, remove the chin straps’ buckle. If your helmet contains a chin shield, you should also remove it.

2. Rinse the straps into a soapy water mixture and gently rub them with an old toothbrush to remove all the grime and dirt from inside the buckle.

3. After that, wash them with clean water and wipe them with a soft cloth.

4. Then keep it in an airy place to dry them.

How To Clean a Football Helmet Visor

The visor is a very sensitive part of the helmet. It has a breaking tendency, so you should deal with it very carefully.

1. You have to choose a good brand of window cleaner, visor cleanser spray, or tape water to clean the helmet visor.

2. You should never roughly wipe it with a cloth or finger. That has a risk of spoiling your visor.

3. Only spray the visor cleaner on your helemt’s visor and let it sometimes rest to dry the spray liquid.

4. Lastly, gently wipe the visor with tissue paper to get a crystal clear view.

Is There Any Variation of Helmet Cleaning Process Depending on Helmet Color?

Some athletes have the misconception that the washing or cleaning process depends on the helmet color. So sometimes, they become confused about how to clean a matte black football helmet, or how to clean a white football helmet. The truth is color does not matter here. You can follow the above steps for cleaning any color football helmet.

Some Tips and Tricks of How To Clean up a Football Helmet

Knowing some essential tips and tricks will make your life easier. That’s why here we like to share some simple hacks about helmet cleaning.

Use helmet cleaner

You have to use a football helmet cleaner when cleaning your helmet. Because the cleaners are made by focusing on the helmet, so it will not damage your helmet. 

Disinfectant spray

After washing the helmet, you can spray a disinfectant to kill harmful bacteria. When you apply the disinfectant spray, you should keep the helmet upright on a stable surface until it’s dry.

Don’t keep the helmet under direct sunlight

You can dry the helmet using a dry towel or cloth instead of sunlight. Drying a football helmet in extreme sunlight may deteriorate the internal padding and fade its color. As a result, your favorite football helmet may be damaged.

Don’t use Abrasive cleaners and chemicals

It is wise not to use any abrasive cleaners and chemicals to protect your football helmet. Instead of these harmful chemicals, you better use a mild and non-abrasive cleaner to keep the helmet non-toxic. Don’t use any chemical that contains bleach, ammonia, etc. It may ruin your valuable gadget.

Also related:

• how much does a football helmet weigh?
• how much does a football helmet cost?

Final Thought

So, now you know all the information about how to clean a football helmet. Why are you waiting then? If you have some time at hand and need to clean your dirty helmet, just follow the above steps thoroughly to make your helmet durable, clean, and germ-free.

We would like to hear from you about your experience of your helmet cleaning DIY job. You can tell us what process you like best by leaving a comment in our comment section.

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