Coloring leather isn’t all that distinct from coloring wood. You can use either a dye or a pigment; the distinction between them is that a dye consists of smaller particles which penetrate deeper into the material’s pores. Most white leather isn’t dyed — it is colorized with a pigment and then top-coated with a transparent finish. Creating your own colorant isn’t that challenging, and applying it and finishing the leather with a topcoat even less so.
Dye Vs. Colorant
When you dye leather, then you normally wipe it with an alcohol or water-based solution, and the dye particles — that may be made of synthetic or natural substances — squeeze deep into the pores. The resulting color is generally a combination of the dye and the pure colour of the leather. Pigments, composed of larger particles, tend to remain closer to the surface and make a more opaque coating. The distinction is comparable to staining wood vs painting it. White sofas are generally colored with pigments, which explains why the white end frequently gaps or wears away.
Homemade Pigment Colorant Ingredients
To earn a colorant for your sofa, you need a pigment and a solvent to dissolve it. You can acquire white pigment at an art shop, where you should choose titanium white — it has double the concealing power of white pigments and creates a brilliant white color. You can also use universal white pigments from a paint shop. Both come from easy-to-use plastic tubes. The most effective solvent for transporting the pigment into leather is denatured or isopropyl alcohol. A resin, such as nail polish — that is essentially nitrocellulose lacquer — gives the colorant body. You’ll need a little bit of lacquer thinner to mix the lacquer into the alcohol base.
Joining the Colorant
The basic colorant consists of pigment mixed with alcohol — simply add pigment to the alcohol and stir until the mixture is opaque. If you only wipe this mixture on the leather, however, the results may be disappointing, since neither component imparts any sheen. To include that variable, thin nail polish or nitrocellulose lacquer with 50 percent lacquer thinner, and then stir the mixture into the alcohol solution. Test the colorant on a piece of scrap leather before applying it on your sofa, and add more pigment, solvent or lacquer as needed to make a colorant which suits your taste.
Using the Colorant
The best way to use the colorant is to spray it, but you can also apply it with a rag or paintbrush. Should you employ it with a rag, you’re likely going to need more than one program. When the arc disappears, wipe down the leather with a clean rag to remove any pigment that chalks on the surface. To repair the colorant from the leather, then you will want to apply a topcoat: Use a business acrylic leather finish, or rub on carnauba wax and buff it to a glossy shine with a buffing cloth.