How to Care for Leather Shoes?

Do you own any leather Bruno Marc dress shoes, oxford shoes or Chukka boots? Then this ‘how to care for leather shoes’ guideline is for your knowledge surely. Monthly five minutes can save & last your shoes for years. After completing this article you may not need to worry for your favorite shoes in wardrobe ever.

Normally leather shoes are high price shoes. Ever wondered why? Leather is skin, do you remember that? So it needs care just as like skin. Yeah as an animal skin it is different from human skin, but as it last longer after processing, it needs special take care for leather shoes.

With proper take care of leather shoes, they will last longer, will look great even after years. Similar to your skin, these days there are leather moisturizers & best leather conditioners to treat leather boots. Regular apply can protect leather shoes with special care and ensures properly maintain leather shoe’s life.

How to care for leather shoes?

We will recommend the following ‘take care of leather shoes’ guidelines for cleaning, conditioning, polishing and protecting your foot protector at home. You may not need to visit any cobbler ever if you follow these leather shoe care guidelines carefully.

Required Best Leather Shoe Care Products:

Most of the leather care products are available in home these days. But in case you don’t have it, you can collect these basic necessary leather care products from any nearby shop or online by clicking below links.

1. Hand gloves for cleanliness.
2. Horsehair brush or Soft bristle toothbrush.
3. Sponge/rag.
4. Saddle soap.
5. Mild warm water.
6. Leather moisturizer.
7. Leather conditioners.
8. Salt stain remover.

Leather Shoes Care Guideline:

Cleaning : Basic Leather Shoes Care

1. Regularly brush shoes to keep off dirt and debris by using a horsehair brush or soft cloth piece.
2. For a more intense cleaning, use saddle soap and damp paper towel or cloth. Always wipe soap after cleaning from the shoes as soap may have mild acidic ingredients. Finally normal air dry as I follow for cleaning white leather shoes always.
3. If you want to clean shoelaces(if any), we will recommend removing those from shoes and hand wash by using laundry detergent in mild warm water. Shoe laces should be completely dried out before using on shoes.

Conditioning : Applying Best Leather Shoe Care Products

1. Use any of the available best leather conditioner in horsehair brush or soft cloth to the shoe’s uppers.
2. Conditioning cream for the all over the leather will be very effective for leather health. If possible find a same color cream & use to match more with shoes & hide small scratches on it if any. Let it settle there for min 3 minutes, then apply horsehair shine brush to remove if any extra cream on it.

   

3. Leather care products like mink oil or neatsfoot oil in market. By using these on leather, it becomes water resistant to some magnitude, we prefer you use any of the best from them & increase leather life duration & give it some safety from water. Apply yearly twice for new like oxford shoes unless you have excessive shoe use.
4. Dry in normal air & use a soft clean cloth or paper towel to thorough the best leather conditioner effect.
5. If you condition your shoes well, that will protect it from salt stains. These days salt stain remover is also available. Just apply and wait to dry it out, stain removes by that time.

Polishing : Shiny Leather Shoes

1. Use a color matched leather shoe polish/wax by horsehair brush or soft cloth in a circular motion for polishing. For high shine use wax instead of shoe polish.
2. Dry in normal air. And buff by using a clean cloth or paper towel. Shoe cream needs 3 minutes where are wax will take 10/15 second to settle, so start buffing after that.
3. For extra shining, you may repeat.

Precaution : Using Basic Necessary Leather Care Products

If your leather shoes are painted or dyed, you can protect them with acrylic finisher & clean them with cloth. Avoid using alcohol base cleaners on painted/dyed shoes; else it will distort the texture. Any leather shoe polish or cream will give your oxford shoes extra leather moisturizer. These days all soft of leather shoes care products are available in online & stores, you can avail those as per your need.

Precaution, do not uses heat to dry leather conditioner but normal air on any of your leather shoes. Try to keep at room temperature and dry out there if any leather moisturizer applied. When you find your shoes are damp you may use newspaper to aid the drying process. This newspaper also keeps shoes in shape after using of any leather conditioner.

Final Words : How to Take Care of Leather Shoes

Shoes needs care, doesn’t matter if it’s made of faux leather or original cowhide. For long lasting service, if cared it returns well. Nothing is free in this world, all shoes need is only five to ten minutes of caring & pampering, for months or even years of long service from it. And remember its shoes which get first staring when someone looks at a man to judge. So it needs to be cleaned regularly as well as taken care of related other issues by following ‘how to care for leather shoes’ guideline, even it is little shoelace in case. Let us know your feedback or shoe stories below for our Anaconda Leg readers.