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Best Snow Foams 2025

January 13, 2025 by Jamie Edkins

Snow foam is no longer something just used by professionals and Instagrammers. The photogenic white blanket of pre-wash detergent is the biggest innovation in car care of the past decade, allowing anyone with a pressure washer to soften the dirt on their paintwork before having to touch it with a sponge or wash mitt.

Besides looking great on social media and reducing the amount of effort needed to clean your car, it also reduces the tiny scratches and swirls caused when you drag dirt around the paint as you wash by hand.


The foam works by clinging to the surface of the car and dissolving dirt, a little like leaving your pans in the sink to soak after making dinner. After leaving the car sat under the foam coating for a few minutes, you can use a pressure washer or even just a hose to rinse the suds away. Hopefully a lot of the dirt will go too, minimising the amount you’ll need to touch the precious paint.

The boom in snow foams means there are plenty of products to choose from, so we tested them to judge their cleaning power, ease of use and value. While some professional foams are slightly acidic to boost their effectiveness on oily road ‘films’, we used pH neutral products which are aimed at DIY motorists and won’t harm protective wax coatings.

Each was mixed to the suggested concentration and then applied directly to a dirty panel using a syringe. After five minutes the panel was rinsed using normal hose pressure. The amount of remaining dirt was then measured using a clean white cloth.

We then repeated the process using a Karcher K4 pressure washer and a VERTOOL Hydro 360 snow foam bottle. We then checked for cleaning power again, along with clinging ability and other factors such as aroma and ease of use.

The best snow foams are: 

Halfords Advanced HP Snow Foam – Best for value

Like the big supermarkets, Halfords now has two tiers of some of its own brand products, with a lower cost option plus a premium choice which is supposed to offer more performance at a higher cost.

The new ‘Advanced’ range is in this higher tier, but is hardly expensive, with a price of £11 for a 2.5 litre bottle. This gives a cost per wash of 18p at the suggested 1:5 dilution ratio.

What really impressed us though was the cleaning ability. Using the syringe test it was clearly able to remove more of the grime than almost all of the other products here. The foam isn’t the most impressive as it looks a little watery when applied with the pressure washer and gun, but there is still clearly some of the mixture left clinging to the surface of the paint, which slowly drips down the panels. Unlike some of the other products, the residual foam quickly disappeared from the driveway too.

Bilt-Hamber Touch-Less – Best for cleaning ability

Bilt-Hamber is a bit of an open secret in car care circles, as its products are nearly always top performers. They are not usually the cheapest though, but the cost is offset by the effectiveness.

This is exactly the case with the Touch-Less snow foam. It looks pricey at just under a tenner for a litre, but it’s highly concentrated, meaning you need to use far less than alternatives to get a decent result. In fact it only costs slightly more per wash than the Halfords Advanced when used at the correct ratio and can be an even more effective cleaner. It produces a surprisingly decent foam too, making it easy to see where you’ve been spraying.

But getting the right ratio is time consuming and tricky. Bilt-Hamber’s instructions are baffling, suggesting that users should measure the exact amount being dispensed from the lance by firing the pressure washer jet into a bucket until the snow foam reservoir is empty and then using a calculation to work out the correct dilution. It took us around fifteen minutes of faffing and headscratching.

We can see the reasons and it might be the sort of activity which would be worthwhile for a professional, but we suspect most DIY users will just prefer the simple ‘splash and dash’ measurements of rivals.

AVA Citrus Pre Wash – Best for ease of use

You might not have heard of AVA yet, but the company has big plans to challenge Karcher in the pressure washer market, and we’ve already been impressed by its innovative machines. The company also makes a selection of car care consumables including this snow foam, called a Pre Wash.

It couldn’t be any easier to use, as you simply add a 50ml dash into 450ml of water in your foam bottle, giving a half litre of mixture which is more than enough to cover most cars. That means the 1-litre bottle will last between 20 and 40 washes if you measure carefully, but it is only middling in terms of value in this company.

The resulting bright orange mixture looks like the Scottish fizzy drink Iru Bru, and it has a similar sweet smell too. There’s little in the way of bubbles from the AVA liquid though, as it creates a disappointing amount of foam.

This might ruin some of the fun, but it doesn’t hurt the cleaning ability – the Pre Wash did a good job of melting our grime.

Simoniz Snow Foam – Best for aroma

If you want to encourage your kids to help with the car cleaning, or simply like a nice smell as you wash, then the Snow Foam from Simoniz is the product for you. The ‘Juicy Watermelon’ fragrance has an aroma which reminded us of a Pic’n’Mix counter at the cinema.

Unlike the Pic’n’Mix though it is never sickly and is reasonable value, even if used at the stronger 1:4 dilution rate suggested by the instructions for heavy soiling. If your car is only slightly dirty, the company suggests you can get away with 1:9, which makes it one of the most economical in this test.

However, the cleaning power at the higher dilution rate was negligible, despite there still being a decent amount of foam produced. At 1:4 it was far more effective at dissolving the dirt, but still not as effective as the Bilt-Hamber and Halfords.

When comparing costs, it’s worth bearing in mind that you can find the Simoniz in bigger shops such as Tescos, so you won’t need to factor in delivery charges.

Duel Assault – Best for foam

If you have ever wondered what your car would look like painted white or want to take pictures of it covered in foam for Instagram, then get yourself a bottle of Duel’s Assault.

Even with the green liquid diluted to the suggested ratio of 1:9 it produces a satisfyingly thick foam which clings to paintwork and seems to melt off the dirt. After leaving it to dwell for five minutes we were able to rinse away a decent amount of the road grime with the normal hose pressure and even more when using the jet wash.

The sturdy foam does have a downside though, as it also lingers on your driveway until the next time it rains, which might confuse people who see snow on the ground in the middle of summer.

But the bigger issue with Duel Assault is the price. Even though it costs less than a tenner and has a reasonable dilution rate, the cost per wash is more than twice that of our favourites.

Angelwax Fast Foam – Best for leisurely washers

The Fast Foam is usually aimed at professionals, meaning it makes much more financial sense to buy 5-litres for £27 rather than the 1-litre bottle for £12.45.

We can understand why the pro cleaners would like it too, as the suggested dilution rate of 1:9 makes it economical and easy to use – you just add 50ml to 450ml of water in your dispenser.

This results in a thick blanket of soap which clings to the paint, but the instructions suggest you need to leave the suds to soak through the dirt for 10 minutes – that’s double the time of any rival. For a DIYer you could use the opportunity to vacuum the interior, clean the wheels or just go to make a cup of tea, but it must be frustrating for the professionals who have customers loitering while their car is cleaned.

But good things come to those who wait, and the Fast Foam cleaned well, even when only left for five minutes like the rivals.

Karcher Ultra Foam Cleaner – best for Karcher users

Many Karcher pressure washer users will already have tried Karcher’s Ultra Foam Cleaner, as it comes as part of a package in the box with many new machines. Presumably the company is trying to get you hooked on the convenience, as you don’t need to mess around with mixtures or even use a snow foam attachment on the top-of-the-range Karchers.

Instead you simply drop the triangular bottle into top of the machine and twist the nozzle on the lance to the detergent setting. For the cheaper models you’ll need to use a separate lance, but you can still just plug the bottle in rather than needing to dilute in a separate bottle.

The result is a reasonable covering of foam but the cleaning performance was way off the pace compared to our favourites. But more concerning was the cost. Cleaning one car used almost an entire bottle of the liquid and it’s far from cheap. At the time of testing we found it at half price for £5, but in many places it was still a tenner. It would be cheaper to go to a hand car wash.

Autoglym Polar Blast – Best for total treatments

If you’re the sort of person who likes to use the same brand for a shower gel, deodorant and after shave then the innovative trio of Polar products from Autoglym might appeal when you are cleaning the car. The Polar Blast is the snow foam, which is designed as a prewash. This is then followed by a Polar Wash shampoo and then finally the Polar Seal hydrophobic coating.

All are designed to be applied by pressure washer, which sounds as though it will be convenient. However, you need to have spare bottles to hand so you can decant any leftover mixtures from your dispenser to avoid wastage.

We tested the Polar Blast at the 1:5 concentration suggested as a starting point in the instructions, and left it to dwell for our benchmark five minutes. The foam is initially impressive but had almost completely died away before the time was up. The cleaning performance was strong and the cost per wash is reasonable, but it couldn’t match our favourites.

CarPlan Demon Foam – Best for use with a hose

If you don’t have access to a pressure washer but do have a hose, then CarPlan’s Demon Foam allows you to achieve the same blanket of detergent suds without needing any extra equipment.

The 2-litre bottle includes an adjustable foam gun which attaches to any standard hose connector and should automatically mix the fluid with the water when you turn on the tap. That means there is no need to mix and work out dilutions.

In reality, it took a lot of trial and error to get the flows of water and liquid right before we could achieve anything resembling a decent covering of foam, and the bottle is heavy and awkward to use as you work your way around the car.

Once you get it right it does a reasonable job of cleaning, but its effectiveness is reduced by not having a pressure washer’s power to back it up.

At £16 it doesn’t seem bad value though, especially as cleaning our car barely seemed to use any of the bottle’s contents.

Alchemy Whitewash – Best for cleaning in a hurry

While the instructions for some snow foams insist you measure the mixtures with laboratory-like precision, the Alchemy simply suggests you slop an inch of the fluid into your snow foam bottle and top it up with water. This is great if you are in a hurry or hate the fuss, but will result in some wildly differing dilutions depending on your container shape and size.

This might not worry you too much when it comes to the cleaning power, but it might cause concern when totting up the cost. The Alchemy is around £13 for a litre, which is one of the pricier products in this test. We tried the mix at a 1:10 ratio, which roughly corresponded to an inch of fluid and it still looked expensive on a per wash basis compared to rivals.

Perhaps because it was more diluted than some, the foam was a little weak and it doesn’t have the cling you might hope for, but the cleaning power impressed us.

You might also enjoy the smell. The Alchemy White we tried had an almondy aroma, but different flavours are available if you fancy something fruitier.

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