How to Clean Headphone Pads: The Material Is Not on the Card

Every instruction a manufacturer publishes for cleaning ear pads is written for a particular material. Apple's is for knit textile and for its cushions separately. Logitech's splits into plastic and leatherette. Bose sells replacement cushions described as protein leather.

But not one of the 67 headphone cards in this collection states what its pads are made of. Across all of them there are 68 different specification fields, and none of the 68 names a pad material. The instruction depends on a fact the product page doesn't carry.

Sixty-eight fields, and the missing one

The cards describe a great deal about a headphone: driver size, impedance, sensitivity, frequency response, runtime, wireless range, cable length, the number of microphones, whether the cups swivel. Sixty-eight distinct fields appear across the 67 cards.

But the material of the part that touches skin appears in not a single field. Nor does it turn up inside any value: a search across every field of every headphone card for leatherette, protein leather, velour, memory foam, knit, textile, fabric or pleather returns nothing at all.

The dealer does keep a field called Material. Across all 209 product cards collected here it's filled in seven times, and five of the seven are portable speakers, four of them reading "Fabric, Plastic". The other two are a subwoofer cabinet and a tripod. The field exists, but headphones never get it.

And that's the practical problem with a general instruction. "Wipe the pads with a damp cloth" is safe advice precisely because it says nothing, and the specific advice a manufacturer gives can't be applied without knowing which of their instructions is yours.

Where the material is written down instead

The replacement-part pages carry what the product pages leave out.

Bose sells a pair of aviation headset cushions for $49 and describes them as protein leather. Apple sells a pair of AirPods Max cushions for $69 with the line "One set of ear cushions. Made by Apple." Both pages exist because pads wear out, and both name what the customer is buying more precisely than the listing for the headphone does.

So the reliable route to the right instruction runs through the part rather than the product. Find the replacement pad the maker sells for the model, read what it's made of, then read the cleaning document for that material.

Three materials, three sets of instructions

Logitech's cleaning page divides a headset into two materials and gives a list for each. For plastic parts, meaning the headband, microphone boom and the rest, it allows disinfecting wipes, antibacterial wipes, makeup-removal wipes and alcohol swabs below 75 per cent strength. For leatherette earpads it allows disinfecting wipes and antibacterial wipes, permits makeup-removal wipes, and restricts alcohol wipes to what it calls a limited basis.

Apple's instruction for AirPods Max is a recipe rather than a list of products. One teaspoon of liquid laundry detergent in one cup of water, cushions taken off the cups, one minute of work per part, a second damp cloth to wipe again, and drying flat for at least a day. Nothing in it names a product to buy, and nothing in it applies to a leatherette pad.

Bose names protein leather on the cushion page but publishes the care instruction elsewhere, and that's the general pattern, with the material is on one page and the method on another.

Where two makers contradict each other

Apple's general cleaning page carries a sentence that applies to every product it makes: disinfecting wipes are for hard, non-porous surfaces, and "Don't use on fabric or leather surfaces."

But Logitech allows disinfecting wipes on leatherette earpads.

Both statements are current, both come from the maker of the product in question, and they can't both be followed on a headphone whose pads are covered in a leather-like material. The instruction isn't general knowledge. It belongs to the manufacturer of the specific object, and following the wrong one is how pads get ruined.

And the narrower point holds too. Apple's own AirPods Max page repeats the exclusion for the cushions specifically and for the knit mesh canopy, while allowing the same wipes on the outside surfaces of the cups. One product, two rules, decided by material.

The steps every maker does agree on

Four instructions appear in more than one document and contradict nothing in any of them.

1. Power off and unplug first. Logitech's sanitising page asks for five seconds after that before anything touches the product.
2. Take the pads off if they come off. Apple's procedure is written that way, and it's the only way to keep liquid away from what's underneath.
3. Keep moisture to a minimum. Logitech states it plainly, saying the products aren't waterproof and nothing should drip or seep in.
4. Let them dry completely. Apple's figure is at least a day, laid flat.

None of the four requires knowing the material, and that's why they're the part of the answer that can be given without the specification the card doesn't carry.

What none of the pages answers

But no manufacturer document consulted here says how often the pads should be cleaned. None gives a life expectancy for the foam. None says at what point a pad should be replaced rather than washed, though both Bose and Apple sell the replacement and price it: $49 and $69 a pair, the second against a headphone the same dealer lists at $449.

Those prices are the only figures in this article that came from a product page rather than a support document, and they're the ones that answer the question nobody asks until the pads are already flaking.

Sources

1. Logitech's page on cleaning a headset, last edited 28 October 2025: two materials with a list for each, allowing disinfecting wipes, antibacterial wipes, makeup-removal wipes and alcohol swabs below 75 per cent on plastic parts, and on leatherette earpads allowing the first two, permitting makeup-removal wipes and restricting alcohol wipes to a limited basis.
2. Apple's instructions for cleaning AirPods Max: one teaspoon of liquid laundry detergent in one cup of water, cushions removed from the cups, one minute per part, a second damp cloth to wipe again, and drying flat for at least a day; disinfecting wipes allowed on outer surfaces but not on the cushions or the knit mesh canopy.
3. Apple's general page on cleaning its products: soft lint-free cloth only, nothing sprayed onto the product, nothing allowed into openings, and the sentence "Don't use on fabric or leather surfaces" applied to disinfecting wipes across the range.
4. Bose's page for a pair of replacement aviation headset ear cushions: $49 for the pair, described as protein leather, and listed as fitting two headset models.
5. Apple's store page for AirPods Max replacement ear cushions: $69 for a pair, "One set of ear cushions. Made by Apple", in the same five colours as the headphones.
6. Field counts across the headphone class come from listings of 200 audio products collected the same way. How those are converted and compared.

What we did not do

No pads were washed for this page. Every instruction above is a manufacturer's, and what we add is the reading: which of them apply to which material, and where the material itself is written down.