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Wives’ tales that can ruin the leather seats in your car: Video

You might read that you can use window cleaner, nail polish remover, magic sponges, cleaning wipes, hair spray, shoe polish and markers to fix your leather auto interior.  But, these products will damage your leather, and you should not use them.

If you leave more questions in the comments, we’d be happy to answer them for you.  You can also find more information in our more in-depth posts about wives’ tales.

Do not use hair spray to fix leather upholstery

Hair spray has always been a favorite fix-all by old wives’ tale believers.  Hair spray has been hailed as a solution for stain removal, stopping runs in tights and is now being used to remove stains from leather furniture.

While many of the ladies here at Fibrenew do insist that it works wonders on stocking runs, we are all 100 percent in agreement that you should NEVER try using it on leather.

There are two main reasons not to use hair spray on leather furniture or other upholstery:

  1. A lot of hair spray contains alcohol, and alcohol damages the surface of all types of leather upholstery.  While you may not see the damage right after you spray it on, you will notice that it breaks down the leather’s ability to protect itself from damage down the road.  This is especially true for fully-finished leather.
  2. Hair spray is always going to leave your leather feeling a little sticky.  You might think of this as a minor nuisance and just wait for it to wear off, but the truth is that “just a little sticky” is actually more problematic than you might think.  The hair spray residue will attract little tiny pieces of dirt and dust that you might not be able to see with the naked eye.  This will cause abrasion as people move around on your upholstery, breaking down the protective topcoat on fully-finished leather and digging into and damaging semi-aniline or aniline leather.

There are a number of other home remedies and wives’ tales about using home products on leather.  We do not advise using:

Questions or experiences with hair spray on leather?  Post them in the comments!