Canvasback Back Seat Cover for the 5th Gen 4Runner

Second Row Bench Seat Cover & Liner To Protect Against Kids, Crumbs, Dog Hair, Dog Nails & Much More

Whatever kids you have; human or the four-legged furry kind, you know how dirty the back seat of the 4Runner can get.

There are hundreds of ways the back seat can get destroyed but the two main culprits are usually the dogs and kids. They’ll usually accomplish this with zero remorse and we usually chalk it up to the fact that they’re… just kids being kids. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the seats can be protected. And maybe, just maybe… the back seats in the 4Runner don’t have to get destroyed if you have animals or kids.

Today is your lucky day. Canvasback is here to save your upholstery with their second-row bench seat covers.

Find it online

• Canvasback Direct: Check Price
• Shop all their 5th Gen Offerings: Check Prices

Made to order and made in the USA, Canvasback is well known for making very high-quality upholstery and carpet protection products for the 5th Gen 4Runner along with other makes and models.

Dogs

Kaina: pictured in all her summer shedding glory

Wet dogs, sandy dogs, and even clumsy dogs – our furry friends love tagging along for the ride. They just always seem to bring something with them; a pile of snow, a paw full of sand, or that lovely seasonal shedding mane.

Regardless of what your furry friend brings into your 4Runner, you want to keep your seats protected.

The Canvasback seat cover liners do just that. They protect against the common elements dogs bring into the 4Runner; both wet or dry. The liners will protect against wet hair, general moisture issues, shedding, sand, chew toys, paws and nail scratches, rock scratches, and much more.

Kids, Food & Spills

If you’re a parent and you have little ones snacking in the back seat, you know how messy things can get. Food crumbs and spills are gross when they sit in the crevice of a seat. Food crumbs are even more disgusting when they’re mixed with sticky juice, hair, and everything else that comes with a growing little one.

Now, add a few months of all those items mixed together baking on your seat in the hot summer months… yikes.

For the Toyota SofTex (synthetic leather), this can somewhat be cleaned off. It’s gross, but you can still clean it. For the fabric seat owners out there, forget about it.

There are ways to shampoo fabric and if there is a will, there’s a way but this isn’t a cleaning post, so we won’t go there. This is a “protect the backseat of your 4Runner” post, so let’s do just that, let’s protect the backseat of the 4Runner. Let’s defend against these wild concoctions and messes our little ones create with a set of Canvasback Seat Covers specifically made for the 5th Generation Toyota 4Runner.

The seat covers provide total coverage on the back seat and when things get messy, you can wash them with warm soapy water, lay them out to air dry, and throw them back in.

Kids & Car Seats

Not only do food & drinks from the kiddos land between the seat cushions but a car seat also causes wear and tear when placed directly on the seat.

Wear and Tear

With the car seat base placed directly on the seat, it creates consistent weight and friction – which over time causes many issues. The weight from the car seat creates a large indent from the low points and the friction causes the leather to fade and wear over time. This can have similar effects on cloth but is much more pronounced on synthetic leather.

If you have a car seat on your leather for a few years, it might take a few years to fully regain the seat’s true flat shape and color as it arrived from the factory. There is also no guarantee the seat will ever take shape again as there are many other factors involved including weather, direct sunlight, window tint, etc.

Both the color fading and the indent can be restored but with great effort.

Leather Fading

For fading leather, there are professional upholstery restoration products and end-user products that can be purchased nearly anywhere. Both products work but the professional services tend to yield better results. The indent will recover and take full shape as well, but with time.

The time is very dependent on how long the car seat lives in the 4Runner. Was the car seat there for a few days or a few years? Was there a kid sitting in it every day or once a week?

Full-time car seats should get full-time protection…

In any case, car seats that live on seats full time (especially leather) are detrimental to the integrity of the material. Do yourself a favor and protect your seats, at least use a towel or some kind of cushion in between the car seat and your seat material; be it leather or fabric. Just make sure you use a material that will not bleed or transfer any color from the pressure of the car seat onto the leather or fabric.

These Canvasback seat covers seem to be doing the trick for us so far. After a couple months of running the covers, we pulled the car seat out and removed the covers. The indent seems to be recovering although it’s a bit earlier to tell.

Velcro Makes for Easy Install

The installation is super easy. It’s made of velcro strips and strap buckles behind the headrest. That’s it.

Durable Fabric

The material is 600 X 300 Poly Denier with PVC undercoating waterproof fabric. It’s very thick!

This is going to take pressure off of our seats where the car seat sits. It’s not going to catch water or liquid spills but for the dry materials; food spills, general crumbs, and especially hair from the dogs – this is going to be a game-changer. The material is clearly going to stand up against what we throw at it.

Skirt Drape

Canvasback includes a side skirt that drapes around the front and sides of the seat for full-coverage protection.

Buckle Straps

The seat cover has straps that fasten around the two headrests that keep them in place. The straps have a buckle to tighten or give slack whichever you choose. This is a pretty nice feature as you can tailor exactly how high or low you want to the backside of the seat cover to rest.

Slip/Slide Prevention Material

The underside of the liner features a rubberized slip-prevention material. The fabric is double layered to give it extreme durability with non-skid and non-slide material. This prevents the liners from sliding around when you’re getting in and out.

It’s not magic, though. The liner can still shift and move around.

There is still a bit of play as the front portion of the liners are not secured down, they simply hang over the front of the seat.

Final Thoughts

Canvasback seat covers protect against shedding dogs and sharp nails.

So how have they been? Well, I knew the quality with Canvasback was there because of all the rave reviews.

There have been outstanding customer reviews of the cargo liners on Trail4Runner.com and others on 4Runners.com. With that said, this back seat cover is a newer product. There is little to no review content on forums, so how does it stack up to their rear cargo liner?

The protection that it provides has been great. This should be a factory Toyota add-on. The black & red stitching looks exactly like our factory color scheme, an added plus.

Independent Seat Movement

One cool feature was the fact that the seat cover allows for independent movement of both seats in the second row, both the seat back and seat bottom. You can move the double seat independently of the single seat while the seat cover is installed.

There was one challenge though. The seat cover is not firmly connected to any one point of the seat bottom once the seat is lifted. This requires you to either drape the seat cover back over the seat bottom or stow it in the back seat compartment. It would be cool if there were flexible cinch straps (bra-like straps) that wrapped around the seat bottom which would hold the cover in place once the seat bottom lifts up.

Outside of that, the seat covers added a layer of protection has been great for the daily crap I throw at them.

Dog Hair, Dog Nails, Food, Crumbs, and Stuff:

The seat cover does its job in this department. The protection provided against dog hair, crumbs, and random crap that falls on the seats has been amazing. Due to the velcro connection points, there are small gap lines where the velcro connects so these aren’t going to provide you 100% protection against liquids. That said, been a couple of months of testing and they’ve held up to everything we’ve thrown at them.

Car Seat:

I definitely have peace of mind knowing that the seat cover is providing an extremely strong layer between the plastic base on the car seat and the leather.

Trail Takeaway? 

The product does the job it’s intended to do; add protection to the back seat of the 4Runner. I highly recommend this brand to anyone looking to preserve their interior.