Furniture leather or car leather ?

All too often, furniture leather is processed in cars, either out of ignorance or because of price advantages. Car leather is mostly manufactured in tanneries which exclusively make this kind of leather. Through their many years of experience, they have acquired extensive knowledge in this area.

One of the main differences between furniture and car leather is that the requirements in the car sector are much more stringent and extensive than in the furniture industry. Unlike a sofa, a car does not stand in the living room. It is parked in an often unheated garage, or outside in the rain, in the cold or in the burning sun. As a result, temperatures vary from –20° up to +35° Celsius. Inside the car the temperature can rise even higher than 35°.

Especially the driver’s seat suffers a great deal. The leather is subject to wear caused by the many small movements of the back and the bottom with relatively rough materials such as e.g. jeans. Still, customers expect the driver’s seat to stay optically equal to the other seats in the car. In spite of its more intensive use, it should not influence the shine and the look of the seat. In order to achieve this, the tanning process is achieved with special chemicals and with the help of high quality technical control apparatus.

This explains why car leather is more expensive than furniture leather. It also means that caution is in order when leather for car upholstery is offered. The material may look nice and feel smooth, so it’s easy to be tempted when the price is nice too.

However, without any test guarantees both the manufacturer and the customer run an immediate or future risk. To be able to judge the quality of skins to be manufactured as car leather, tanneries or laboratories have a wide range of tests at their disposal. Tests can for instance be carried out to determine its resistance to transpiration, creases, scratches, water, cold, heat and - not to forget - the fogging test.

How to clean a leather interior ?

Going over the seats with a wet chamois at the weekly washing is enough. To keep the leather smooth and soft, it has to be treated with a nutritious leather cream.

Do not try to clean the seats with a scouring cream or soap, or with any other product, as they may contain chemicals that could damage the surface irrevocably.

Does leather hold warmth ?

No, it does not. On the contrary, leather even cools down faster than some other materials used in the car sector. Just like our skin, the pores of the leather generate a cooling effect on your seats.

How to proceed ?

Before we make an appointment to execute the necessary works, we prefer to examine the car on the spot. It happens rather frequently that we are faced with a car that contains different types of seats or other parts, depending on where or when it was produced.

The normal delivery period is 5 days, after confirmation of your order one week in advance either in our workshop or by fax. Even if we should not have the model required, we can manufacture it while maintaining the delivery time of 5 days.