How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

Save money and learn how to restore leather furniture, leather shoes, leather purses, leather jackets, leather pants, leather anything in 4 easy steps with this DIY tutorial!

When we bought our third fixer-upper, the French Country Cottage, we sold a lot of furniture and bought “new” furniture to work better in the space.

I am all about finding nicely used high-quality furniture, and one such amazing findwas a 4 piece set of leather living room furniture.

The seller assured me that there were no major tears, and other than having been used for many years the cushions and leather were all in good shape.

So . . . Saturday morning road trip with some Dora in the van and Chick-Fil-A for lunch – my kids were pumped to get this furniture. 🙂

Look how little they were (if not already evidenced by the fact that Caleb was still excited about Dora).

For more furniture transformations be sure to check out:

How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

Below you can see the 4 pieces of furniture that we got.

A chair and ottoman. Look how dry that leather is!

Love seat.

Sofa.

This is the seat on the chair. You can see how unbelievably dry it is. Leather is basically skin. Literally. Animal skin.

It is supposed to stay conditioned and moisturized in order to stay soft and avoid cracking.

You can see the ottoman was suffering from the same condition.

From the looks of the back of the love seat, the previous owners had a pet that liked this particular spot.

All of the seats needed a lot of conditioning.

There were multiple small scratches like the ones noted here.

How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

The Leather Restoration Kit

The very FIRST thing you must do is determine if your leather is absorbent or non-absorbent by reading this article.

If you have aniline leather or absorbent leather, which is very soft to the touch and does not appear to have a “finish” or shine to it, then this method will not work!

Check out this cleaning kit for aniline or absorbent leather.

This kit holds the ingredients to restore your non-absorbent leather in 4 easy steps. I put all of these items in a bag and label it “Leather Restoration Kit.”

Leather Honey Leather Cleaner
Tear Mender Leather Adhesive
Kiwi Shoe Polish
Leather Honey Leather Conditioner
Q-tips
Leather Honey Lint Free Cloth or Clean old socks
Rubber gloves

How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

#1. Clean the leather

Dilute approximately 2 T of the Leather Cleaner in one cup or 8oz of lukewarm water.

I used baby wipes dipped in the cleaning solution to wipe down the leather.

Make sure you let the leather completely dry for several hours. It should not feel damp to the touch.

How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

#2. Repair the leather

Using the tear mender leather adhesive bottle inspect the leather for any tears or rips.

For larger cuts and tears consider this Leather and Vinyl Repair Kit by Fortivo. A step-by-step guide to using this repair kit is also included on the Amazon link here.

To use the small tear mender bottle I simply took a tweezer and held the tear in place while gluing the edges together.

I used a Q-tip to wipe off any excess or drips.

Allow it to dry according to directions on the bottle.

How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

#3. Touch up with the shoe polish.

The Kiwi Shoe Polish comes in tan, black, white, brown, blue etc. Find the color that is closest to the color of your leather.

Take a clean, old sock and apply the polish to your piece. I used the polish on all of the leather because of how worn and cracked it was, but you can also just use it as touch-up as needed.

BTW, here is a tip on how to open these cans. I have two masters degrees, and I had to google how the heck to open this thing.

The bottom line is that you twist the metal piece along the side to catch under the lip of the lid and pop the top off. Then you just press the top back on when done!

Use one of your clean old socks and rub the shoe polish over the leather.

You can see in the pictures below the difference just the shoe polish makes.

I let the shoe polish set overnight and then move to the last step.

How to Restore Leather in 4 Easy Steps

#4. Condition the leather.

Using Leather Honey’s Leather Conditioner put a small amount on another clean, old sock or the Leather Honey Lint Free Cloth and rub it into the leather.

A little will go a long way, but if the leather is really dry as these pieces were, you may need to go over an area a couple of times. Remember leather is skin and needs to be moisturized so rub it in as you would rub lotion onto your arm.

This is my favorite step. Look at the difference. The loveseat shows the before and after difference. The right side has been restored with the 4-step leather restoration kit and the left has been untouched.

You can hardly see the scratches on the right side.

Wow. From this angle, the left side has been restored.

This is the power of step 4. Look at the difference conditioning makes.

Don’t be afraid of beat-up leather. You can find SO many used leather sofas on Facebook Marketplace for half and even a third of the retail price.

With this kit and 4 easy steps it can turn into beautifully restored leather furniture that now gracefully reflects its age.