In the business scope of laundries, the care of waxed leather products often represents a higher technical threshold and profit margin. This leather surface has a unique aged texture and a warm touch, but its characteristics also determine that it cannot be cleaned through a standardized process. For laundry shops that want quality service, this is a good opportunity to show professional capabilities.
What is Waxed Leather?
Waxed leather is a kind of cowhide. It is significantly different from ordinary cowhide. It is made from top-grain cowhide through grinding, oiling, and waxing to form a special leather texture. As a fashionable leather craft with vintage artistic effects, it is also the preferred leather material for major world brands.
It has strong water and oil absorption. The part contaminated with water or oil will darken in color. In fact, it is these characteristics that give waxed leather a nostalgic and time-worn feel. Its shiny surface effect seems as if a layer of oil and wax has been kneaded into the leather, presenting a hazy look. When the leather is folded or rubbed, you can see the blending and changing of the surface color and the base color.
Characteristics of Waxed Leather
- Discoloration
Its prominent feature is discoloration. Its surface is covered with a thin layer of wax, and the entire leather is impregnated with oil. To achieve the discoloration and vintage effects, sealing is intentionally avoided.
When the leather is stretched, the color depth changes. Scratches are likely to occur when such products are scraped by hand. This is also the most distinctive characteristic of waxed leather.
- Good Air Permeability
Waxed leather has good air permeability. Unlike cheap leather, which is coated with a thick surface layer to hide flaws, high-quality waxed leather products are the finest among waxed leathers. They are generally made from carefully selected cowhide from high-quality pastures, ensuring the leather is smooth, soft, and elastic.
- Not Prone to Mildew
Waxed leather has strong water and oil absorption. The surface color will darken when it meets water or oil. However, if it is clean water, it can recover after being dried.
This is because the “vacuum drying” process is used in the production of waxed leather. Mechanical equipment is used to extract moisture from the leather, which ensures that the genuine leather is not prone to mildew or decay.
After a long production process, the moisture evaporation is slower, and the fiber loosening is more uniform. This ensures a softer hand feel, more even firmness, and stronger resistance to mildew and decay.
- Color variation
Since the leather itself is not polished or modified by machines, each piece of leather reacts differently to oil and wax impregnation. This results in variations in coloring. Every piece of leather is different. Meanwhile, fully impregnated with oil and wax, it shows a rich appearance and excellent hand feel when stretched. It has beauty that corrected leather cannot match.
- Scars may exist
Similarly, since waxed leather is not polished, modified, or coated by machines, and is only covered with a thin layer of wax, it retains the leather’s most original state. Therefore, various scars caused to the cow during free-range rearing are preserved and presented intact on the leather surface. Of course, these scars have naturally recovered and healed during the cow’s lifetime and will not affect the leather’s physical properties.
The unique marks of waxed leather are highly popular in Europe and America. Leather with scars is regarded as a truly high-quality product. If other processes are used to cover scars on the leather surface, it will lose the air permeability and other natural excellent characteristics of top-grain cowhide, making it no different from ordinary leather.
Precisely because of these natural flaws, the leather exudes a comfortable and natural temperament, while retaining its natural breathing channels—natural pores.
- Process Limitations
Waxed leather cannot be sealed. Its surface is covered with a thin layer of wax, and the entire leather is impregnated with oil. Sealing is intentionally avoided to achieve the discoloration and vintage effects. When inspecting the leather in daily life, we can find that pulling it by hand will produce a color change of varying depths. This is also the most distinctive feature of waxed leather. If waxed leather is sealed during production, it will not discolor and become non-breathable.
Why is Waxed Leather so Expensive?
Leather can be divided into many types from different perspectives. The easiest classification: top-grain leather and split leather.
High-quality waxed leather is made of top-grain leather.
Split leather has poor color fastness and wear resistance, a hard hand feel, and poor air permeability. It is the cheapest type among similar leathers.
According to the grain surface condition, it can be further divided into aniline products, full-grain finished products, corrected-grain products, and embossed products. Waxed leather belongs to aniline products. The raw materials used require high-grade hides with low damage, which are natural leathers without finishing. It is equivalent to the state of a person’s face after washing without makeup, and it belongs to the most natural high-end leather. Therefore, one reason for the high price of waxed leather is the high requirement for the grade of raw hides.
At the same time, waxed leather adopts oil tanning. Unlike coatings, the leather after tanning and dyeing cannot be washed off, and oil and wax are difficult to decompose from the leather. Therefore, waxed leather cannot be reprocessed, resulting in high production risks. This is another reason why waxed leather is relatively expensive.
How to Maintain Waxed Leather
- Do not use the bag continuously. After using it for two or three days, insert a bag shaper and let it rest for a period of time.
- After using the sofa, gently pat the seat and edges to restore their shape. This helps reduce slight indentations caused by mechanical fatigue due to concentrated sitting force.
- When storing, keep it away from heat-dissipating objects and avoid direct sunlight to prevent the leather from cracking and fading.
- Waxed leather is afraid of water and oil. For large stains, use special leather cleaning fluid because the leather cannot come into contact with water, and the special cleaning fluid can also prevent the leather from fading and yellowing.
- Perform regular waxing maintenance.
Conclusion
Positioning waxed leather care as a featured service of the laundry means standing out from homogeneous competition. This can not only effectively increase the average customer transaction value but also attract high-end customers who pursue quality, injecting strong momentum into the sustainable development of the laundry.
As a leading brand specializing in the production of commercial and industrial washing machines and dryers, Kingstar has always been focused on improving the full-scenario service capabilities of laundries. Whether it is to ensure the cleanliness and safety of oil-waxed leather products during the pretreatment stage or to create an ideal fabric condition for subsequent professional maintenance, Kingstar provides professional laundry equipment solutions to help laundries break through technical bottlenecks and undertake high-end leather care services with greater confidence.
