What is leather care

To maintain healthy skin, you use skin care products to keep your skin moisturized and soft. The same goes for leather. Since leather is a natural material, it loses moisture over time, causing cracks. So we must nourish it regularly to keep the leather soft and elastic. And the nourishment we perform is "leather care". In this article, we’ll explain how to properly care for and protect your leather watch strap.

Precautions when caring for leather watch straps

If you accidentally use unsuitable leather care products or methods, it is easy to damage the leather. Before taking care of your leather watch strap, keep the following points in mind:

Don’t clean your leather watch strap too often

Even if leather care can keep your watch strap in top condition, doing it too often can have the opposite effect. When the band gets enough moisture, it stops absorbing care products. Excess nourishing milk will clog the pores and stay on the leather surface, making the watch strap sticky.

Generally speaking, it is enough to maintain the leather watch strap once every 2 to 3 months. However, it's difficult to tell you an exact time, as leather care will vary greatly depending on the type of leather, surrounding environment and personal use factors. In our experience, a leather maintenance session is done when the leather starts to look dry or when it starts to lose its softness.

Do not apply too much leather nourishing lotion each time

For the same reason, leather can become oversaturated if it absorbs too much nourishing milk all at once. Therefore, applying 2 to 3 layers of nourishing milk each time is quite sufficient.

Perform a patch test

There are many different types of leather care products on the market, but not every product is suitable for the leather you own, or its effect may not be as good as you think. If you accidentally use the wrong product, it may cause permanent fading of the leather or deterioration of the quality of the leather. Therefore, we recommend doing a patch test on an inconspicuous area before applying to the entire piece of leather to ensure the leather is compatible with your nourishing lotion.

Leather care product types

You may be asking, "There are countless leather care products out there, how do I know which one is right for my leather goods?" Indeed, it's easy to get confused by the unique names. But leather care products can be mainly divided into four categories:

maintenance oil

This is an oil-based care product that helps moisturize, soften and add shine to leather. The most common maintenance oils are mink oil and cow's foot oil. Before use, you must pay attention to the usage instructions on the product, or carefully choose the maintenance oil you use. If you apply unsuitable products to leather products, it may cause the leather surface to become sticky.

Skin care milk

The texture of maintenance milk is lighter than maintenance oil, which is relatively suitable for thin leather. Like maintenance oil, it not only moisturises the leather, but also maintains its lustre.

Maintenance wax

Maintenance waxes are mainly made from beeswax, mineral wax or carnauba wax. Wax itself has water-blocking properties and cannot deeply moisturise leather, but it can make the leather surface shiny and more effectively isolate water and other liquids, making leather products waterproof.

Special leather care products

Because some leather types, such as suede/suede and exotic leathers, are more fragile than others, they require the use of special moisturisers to care for them. For this type of leather, general leather care products contain too much oil, which may clog the pores of the leather.

However, the types of leather care products on the market are not so clear. Most products are a mixture of the above raw materials, and add ingredients such as shea butter or almond oil to add different effects to the product.

How to care for various types of leather watch straps?

Before taking care of your leather watch strap, you should give it a good clean first, as cleaning the leather will help unclog the pores and allow maintenance products to penetrate into the watch strap.

Tanned/genuine leather strap

Basically, most leather care products on the market are suitable for moisturising tanned/genuine leather straps. You can choose the right moisturiser according to your preference, because each one has a different effect. Some will darken the color of the leather, while others will make the leather surface shiny.

1. Dampen a soft cloth with some moisturising lotion.

2. Apply moisturiser to the entire strap using circular motions.

3. Use another clean, dry cloth to gently wipe the leather surface.

4. Place the leather strap on a flat place to dry.

Suede/suede strap

The thick oil contained in general skin care products can easily accumulate in the pores of suede/suede, thereby damaging its flexible texture. Therefore, we only recommend using leather care products specifically designed for suede/suede.

1. Use a clean soft cloth or sponge to apply some moisturising lotion.

2. Apply moisturizer to the entire strap.

3. Place the leather strap on a flat place to dry.