Don’t underestimate the importance of your car’s interior design. It’s what you’re stuck looking at every time you drive, after all. There may be no one right way to craft the perfect interior, but there are plenty of ways to do it wrong.
1. Matte wood
The finest of finery. Simple wood is classy and robust looking, and makes the inside of a car feel like a home.
2. Cold, hard aluminum
If things must be silver, let them be real metal and not too shiny.
3. Glossy wood
This is dangerously easy to overdo, but wood still beats plastic or soft stuff.
4. Alcantera/suede-type materials
Suedes are perfect for look-don’t-touch spots. It looks fancy but the velveteen tactile sensation of it on my fingers makes me shiver. And it doesn’t wear well on steering wheels.
5. Matte black plastic
Simple, inoffensive.
6. Piano black plastic
Very pretty the first time you open your door, gross after the first time you put a finger on it.
7. Plastic made to look like some alien material
Usually looks polarizing, but at least it’s creative. Often feels like the stuff they make egg cartons out of. I’d worry about getting tired of it.
8. Shiny chrome
Looks overdone even when it’s done well.
9. Marble, real or fake
Somehow looks more alive than wood, and I don’t like it.
10. Plastic made to look like carbon fiber
Tacky at best. One of my own cars is covered in this, and its only saving grace is that you can barely tell it’s supposed to be a weave.
11. Going to a 72-hour Imagine Dragons concert
12. Real carbon fiber
Exposed carbon fiber, like on a race car body? Cool. Tacked-on carbon fiber? Probably never cool, no matter what car it’s on.
And now you get to tell me why I’m wrong. Even though, in so doing, you will of course be wrong yourself.