Firstly, it's important to mention that most leather is actually not just dyed. Most leather is actually dyed and then painted. So whilst a search for 'black leather dye' may have brought you to this blog post, if you're looking to repair or restore your leather you'll get better results with the products we'll talk about below.
However, if you know you do need a black leather dye (if you're dyeing leather for the first time for leathercraft for example) you can see our range of dyes in our Leathercraft product range. Otherwise we'll be exploring three different products that you can use to fix black leather (or any colour of leather) with the following degrees of damage;
Fading and minor scuffs
Deep scratches or holes
Badly faded, cracked (in need of complete restoration)
The bolster of this black leather car seat has been scuffed as someone has got in and out of the car. We fixed this easily with our Leather Balm (in black). It's also available in 20 other colours to work on all shades of leather. It's the easiest to use of the products in this post; all you need to do is wipe it on, leave it to soak in, and then buff off any excess.
This product is actually dyeing the leather back to its original colour. Although the black leather car seat in this photo is actually painted, the painted has been scuffed off exposing the natural leather beneath. So when the product is wiped onto the leather it is soaking in and dyeing the leather black. The main benefit is it will blend into all colours of leather easily and requires little or no DIY experience to use. However, it is only visually fixing the leather; if you want the leather to look and feel smooth again, you should use the product we'll talk about next - our Complete Leather Repair kit.
The next thing we'll look at repairing is when the surface of the leather is damaged too. In this example the black leather has been scratched by a cat, but you could repair any type of damage using the same technique; scuffs, scratches, holes and tears. To fix these types of damage we use the Complete Leather Repair Kit. If the leather is torn or has a hole, fix this first using the glue and patch supplied in the kit. The next step is to use the filler to fill the damage and the black colour is then sponged on afterwards. In this example though we're actually using a black leather paint to repair the damaged paint on the leathers surface. The kit comes with all the products you need to repair the damage and the colour and it is also available in 12 colours (that come with tints) so you can use it to repair any colour of leather.
For this we'll use the Leather Colourant Kit. With this kit we will be cleaning off the old coatings on the leather and re-spraying it with a brand new coat of colour. Here is an example of what the results look like on black leather car seats.
The original leather on these car seats is painted (in fact all car interior leather is painted) and so the majority of the cracking you see it actually in the painted layer. With the Colourant Kit we remove the old layer of paint and in doing so we remove the cracks and also make the leather feel much softer and smoother. This kit will give you a professional finish on all your leather projects and it can be supplied in any colour, or matched to the colour of your leather exactly.
The first product we looked at was the Leather Balm (the product that actually works like a black leather dye). Here is what restoring black leather looks like with this product. Remember, it is just dyeing the leather and not repairing the surface.
The Black Balm has soaked into the leather dyeing the white cracks black, and so hides them from the eye. The results might not be to a professional standard, but because the product is easy to use, gives pretty amazing results anyway and is easy to use (did I say that already?) it's no wonder it is our most popular product when it comes to dyeing leather.
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