What is best advice for lookiing after my new leather 3-piece suite ?

hilda1

Hope to be getting a new leather 3-piece suite soon. Salesmen keep pressuring me into buying their store's leather maintenance kits, which are all relatively expensive.

Can someone please advise me what is the best leather maintenance for 3-piece suites.

Cheers

daveyjp

Where are you looking, how much are you spending?

A decent leather will require no more than water with a squeeze of Stardrops and wipe over - we've used this on ours and also in my car for years. Baby wipes are also excellent for cleaning leather.

You can also use a leather cream cleaner - I use Autoglym leather cleaner which is marketed towards car owners, but is also good for leather sofas.

kabayiri

Baby wipes, seconded here

Annisele

I think it might depend on the leather. If you google "baby wipes cleaning leather" you'll get some horror stories, and some people recommending it very highly.

Unfortunately the store will almost certainly tell you that their super duper expensive stuff is the only way to go, and baby wipes will ruin it - so you'll likely not get impartial advice there, but it's worth asking them.

marmitepotato

kabayiri wrote: »

Baby wipes, seconded here

Yup!! I agree, baby wipes are better than any kit.

judyb

To a certain extent this will depend on the type of leather you have. The 2 main types are Aniline style leather (this absorbs moisture) or a Pigment Coated Leather (this does not absorb moisture).

The key to keeping leather clean and free from stains and marks is to keep them protected, particularly on a pale colours or Aniline style leathers. A good quality leather protector acts like a scotchgard and will inhibit oil and food from causing marks.
This together with regular cleaning will prolong the life of your leather then use a maintenance cleaner which will only take a few minutes to do and can be used very regularly to keep your leather clean.

The best and correct way to look after leather is:

Protect your leather from new
Maintain with a regular clean
Deep clean with a foam leather cleaner once or twice a year depending on usage, colour etc.

Foam cleaners work better than liquid cleaners as they can be left on the surface of the leather to do their job, they are also much safer to use than liquid cleaners.

Never use saddle soap on modern leather furniture, always use water based products as these will keep your leather hydrated correctly. Lexol products are for saddles also and should be avoided. Auto products should not be used on domestic furniture as they are often stronger products becasue auto leather is moer heavily finished so the cleaners could be too strong and do damage.
Household cleaners should be avoided as these are likely to damage the finish on the leather.

Baby wipes are one of the worst things you can use on your leather furniture as they actively break down the finish. When this happens your leather will deteriorate very quickly and be very costly to fix. We take more calls from customers who have ruined their suites in this way than any other problem.

Please note:
Leather conditioners are not protectors (even if they say they do on the bottle) and are not required for modern leathers as they simply sit on the surface and attract more dirt.
Quality leather protectors are not cheap as the technology involved to produce one that works makes them expensive but they go a long way as you do not need much product to do the job.

It is also recommended that your leather is deep cleaned or professionally cleaned once a year.

Hope this helps

The_Blue_Hatter

marmitepotato wrote: »

Yup!! I agree, baby wipes are better than any kit.

Im another on the baby wipes fan club forum!

judyb

Please do not use baby wipes they will ruin the finish on your leather - we speak with independent repair technicians every day and they report repairing damage done with these more than any other repair.

McKneff

~the £1 shop, and all the cheapie shops sell leather cleaning wipes, Ive never had a problem with them, they work for me.

foxymum1977_2

we were told one of the worst things for leather is dust, we were told to dust once a week and wet clean with a cloth once a month.

baby_frogmella

I've been using Lazy Leather cleaner on my leather suite since i bought it 3 years ago and its still looks as good as new. Sure it aint cheap but you're only supposed to use it every few months.