How to clean a leather chair when a tenant leaves

Leather furniture, just like any furniture, needs to be maintained on a regular basis. Part of that involves cleaning your leather sofa, leather chairs and other furniture frequently. Here are a few tips from The Leather Colour Doctor on cleaning your leather chairs.

Cleaning leather furniture: regular maintenance and recent stains

For little marks and stains on your leather furniture, you can use a simple microfiber cloth and a mild soap.

You’ll need:

• microfiber cloth
• mild soap
• vinegar and water

Step one: use a microfiber cloth

A microfiber cloth is great for cleaning a leather sofa because they are unlikely to cause any damage to the leather (ie., scratches).

Step two: use a damp cloth with soap

Get your microfiber cloth and moisten it with the mild soap of your choice. Once moist, you can start using it to clean leather furniture.

Step three: buff with a dry cloth

Rather than rinsing your cleaner out, you will want to buff the cleaner when you clean leather chairs. This will help to work it into the material and prevent you from drying out the material too much by rinsing the soap off.

Step four: lather soap or add vinegar to remove stains

If stains won’t budge with the previous steps, you might need to get the soap to lather by rubbing repeatedly. If that doesn’t work, add a few drops of vinegar instead – this should help to clean leather and remove the stains completely.

Cleaning leather furniture: degreasing a leather sofa

Sometimes you might find that you have a grease stain on your leather sofa or leather chair. These stains can be a little harder to deal with, but fortunately, there are ways to remove your greasy marks from your leather couch.

You’ll need:

• a clean dry cloth
• baking soda

Step one: sprinkle baking soda onto the grease stains

Baking soda is a fantastic way to draw out the grease when it comes to cleaning a leather sofa or leather chair. Sprinkle the baking soda over the stain and leave it there to work.

Step two: brush it off with a cloth

Once you’ve left the baking soda to soak for long enough, you’ll need to brush the baking soda off with a cloth. You should find that this will leave no mark behind.

Cleaning leather furniture: removing ink stains and mould

Unfortunately, sometimes the marks left on our leather are even harder to remove than greasy marks. Things like ink or mould can be really irritating, and obvious, and they often feel like they’re impossible to remove. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

You’ll need:

• rubbing alcohol
• cotton swab

Step one: dab rubbing alcohol onto cotton pad

Carefully get some rubbing alcohol onto the cotton pad without soaking the item completely.

Step two: wipe away stains

Using the wet cotton pads, you should carefully dab the stain until it clears. Be careful not to wipe, dabbing and patting the leather couch instead.

Cleaning leather furniture: fixing discolourations on leather sofas and leather chairs

Sometimes there aren’t specific marks or stains, just patches of discolouration on our leather furniture. To fix this, you can try the following.

You will need:

• Lemon juice
• Cream of tartar
• Cloth

How to:

You can mix together equal parts lemon juice and cream of tartar, and apply the paste to the discolouration. Leave the paste on your leather for up to ten minutes, and then using a damp cloth, wipe it away.

You should find that your tough stains are completely gone!

How to maintain your leather furniture

It’s all well and good knowing how to remove stains and how leather cleaning works, but what if you don’t want to buy white leather cleaner or spend your day dabbing your leather furniture with a dry microfiber cloth, what can you do to make sure you’re looking after your leather furniture?

Leather conditioner

You should always make sure that you use leather conditioner every month or so, and if you’re cleaning leather, the process should always end with a helping of leather conditioner to replace the natural oils you’ve wiped or scrubbed away.

Make sure to clean leather furniture

Hoovering, dusting and just giving your leather sofa and other leather furniture a wipe down can be really beneficial when it comes to preventing stains. Leather cleaners can be useful for this, or you can just use a soft cloth and an antibacterial spray, mild soap or water.

Temperature control

Leather reacts badly to extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. It can be really beneficial to your leather furniture to make sure that it is kept in a room that has a relatively stable temperature. As a result, you’ll find that the leather cracks less, and you won’t need to condition it quite as much.

Avoid sharps

It sounds silly, but leather is quite fragile, so you should always avoid using sharps or keeping sharps in your pockets when you’re on your leather furniture.

Avoid things that stain

It may be obvious, but if you’d like to avoid getting marks or stains on your leather sofa, you’ll need to just stop using stain-causing or spillable items on the sofa. Take pens out of your pocket, or keep your wine away from the couch – that way you won’t have to worry about accidentally making a mistake or damaging the leather.