Leather restoration cleaning and coloring in Cambridge - Would you have thought this leather chair could be repaired?

 

 

Leather restoration cleaning and coloring in Cambridge... At Art of Clean last year we received these leather arm chairs at our leather cleaning plant in Cambridge. The chairs had experienced much bleaching from the sun, which had also dried out the leather, and quite a bit of dirt had built up on the surface of the chairs.

 Many people may have thought these chairs would have been done for, but all they needed is some Art of Clean TLC.  If your leather furniture needs a little restoration call us on 01223 863632 or see our website www.artofclean.co.uk to find out more.  

We are a professional cleaning company who specialise in Carpet Cleaning, Rug Cleaning, Hardwood Floor Cleaning, Stone floor Cleaning, Upholstery Cleaning and Leather Furniture Cleaning for domestic an commercial clients.  We work through out Cambridgeshire, Essex, Suffolk and Hertfordshire.

 

When buying a leather sofa, how do you know which leather to choose between aniline and pigmented? What is the difference?

We can classify the leather in 3 categories:

Aniline/Semi-aniline

Pigmented (protected)

Nubuck/Suede

Analine leather on the left / Pigmented leather on right

1- Aniline/Semi-aniline leather is the most natural looking but it will mark very easily as very absorbent. Aniline leather is coloured only with dye.

2- Pigmented leather is the most durable and easier to maintain as it is cover with a polymer coating with contain pigment. (Leather car seats are usually pigmented)

Clients that have pets or children asked us what leather to buy? Which one would be easier to clean and maintain? Aniline leather is the most difficult leather to maintain as any spillages will penetrate directly into the leather!  Unfortunately it is almost impossible to remove marks from aniline leather! (Please note that water will also mark)

The surface coating of pigmented leather will have more resistance to scuffing or fading. The surface coating will also vary in thickness and if it is more than 0.15mm the item cannot be sold as real leather in the UK due to consumer protection legislation.

3- Nubuck/Suede

This leather has been buffed or brushed to create a nap which gives it a feel of velvet. This process significantly increase the leather fibres exposed on the surface. They are both "fuzzy" in appearance.

Suede is the interior split of the hide. It clearly shows individual soft and reliant fibres.

Nubuck is the sanded outer side of the hide. It has fine, velvety and short fibres.

When you buy a leather sofa how to tell if you are buying aniline or pigmented leather sofa?

Training and experience is key but you can guess by looking at the leather but more importantly by touching/feeling it.

Aniline leather will feel like real skin – very light and flexible - whilst pigmented leather can feel rather like plastic and look like plastic. Aniline leather will show the creases more because they have not been filled out by a surface coating. On pigmented leather, the grain has been covered by the pigment so the crease won’t be so visible.

We can restore your leather so please give us a call on 01223 863 632 and we can arrange to come and have a look.

Removing ink pen from a white leather sofa

This week we were restored a leather sofa near Cambridge. The owners called us after getting pen on the arm of their white leather sofa, so after an initial visit to check the stain; which includes determining the type of leather, the level of soiling, previous damage and the best cleaning method to give the best results, we decided to restore the arm.

With this white sofa we had to strip the arm back to the original leather and then re-pigment with white to restore it back to its original state, please see pics of before and after. We then cleaned and protected the sofa, please see our leather cleaning page for the 4 step-process.

It is worth bearing in mind that when you buy a new leather sofa, that it doesn’t necessarily come with stain protection, and staining can happen almost straight away, which could end up being a complete refurbishment job.

Leather protection is relatively straight forward and cost effective way of protecting your expensive purchase. For a free quotation to protect your valuable asset just give our team a call on: 01223 863632.

Cleaning and restoration of aniline leather with Art of Clean

We just came back from training with Pawlo from Bright and Fresh http://www.brightandfresh.co.uk/aniline.htm.
He showed us how to restore an aniline leather sofa.

The cushion of our client's sofa is 25 years old and they used every type of products to try and clean and maintain it but unsuccessful so they asked us if we can restore it.

The sofa is in France and to ensure the resaults are what our client requires we sugested to clean 2 loose cussion covers. These where the ones we resored with Pawlo's help.


Before:

After:

 
After the cleaning was done,we applied a dye on the cushions and all the cracks and imperfections were completely removed.

See below the difference between pigmented colour (on the left: it stays on the top of the leather like a paint) and dye colour (on the right: you can see that the leather absorbs it so it looks more natural)

We will soon fly to France to carry out the complete restauration  of the suite... once this is completed we will post more pictures of the work