Understanding Suede

Suede is one of those materials people are often unnecessarily scared of.

We regularly get asked whether suede can be cleaned, whether water has ruined it or whether a change in colour means something has gone wrong.

Most of the time, the first thing to understand is that suede isn't supposed to look completely uniform.

What actually is suede?

Suede is a type of leather made using the underside of an animal hide.

Instead of the smooth surface you associate with conventional leather, suede has a raised surface made up of very small fibres known as the nap.

This is what gives suede its texture, but it's also why the colour can appear to change.

Brush the fibres in one direction and the suede can look lighter. Brush them in another and it can look darker.

Nothing has necessarily happened to the colour itself. You're changing the direction of the nap and the way light hits the surface.

It's one of the reasons two shoes made from apparently the same suede can look slightly different.

Suede changes when you wear it

The nap doesn't stay exactly as it was when the shoe came out of the box.

Walking, brushing, rain, dirt and simply handling the shoe will gradually change the surface. Some areas flatten while others remain raised.

Over time you start to get darker and lighter areas and the shoe develops its own pattern of wear. We see people trying to correct this quite often.

The temptation is to keep cleaning, brushing or applying products until both shoes are exactly the same colour again.

Usually I'd do less.

Suede is a natural material and trying to force it into a completely uniform finish can cause more problems than the variation you were trying to remove.

What not to put on suede

A lot of the damage we see isn't actually caused by dirt. It's caused by trying to remove it.

Household stain removers such as Vanish and other peroxide-based cleaners can remove or alter colour and leave light patches behind.

Bicarbonate of soda is another one we see recommended online. We've worked on shoes where it has left the surface sticky or hard and affected the colour of the material.

I'd also be careful with off-the-shelf suede renovators.

Some contain dyes designed to bring colour back into faded suede. That can be useful in the right circumstances, but once you've introduced pigment into the material it can be very difficult to remove again.

It's worth knowing what you're putting on the shoe before trying it.

How I look after suede

I tend to think about suede as skin.

Ultimately, that's what it is.

You wouldn't continually scrub your skin or cover it in increasingly harsh chemicals because of a small mark, and I take much the same approach with suede.

It actually wants very little.

A soft dry brush will deal with a surprising amount of surface dust and help lift the nap again. For more substantial dirt, use a cleaner suitable for the material and avoid saturating the shoe unnecessarily.

We developed our Sneaker Pharm Cleaning & Conditioning Formula to work across footwear materials, including suede. Rather than reaching for increasingly aggressive products, the idea is to use as little intervention as the material actually needs.

[Explore the Sneaker Pharm Cleaning & Conditioning Formula]

The important thing is not to chase perfection.

Suede will darken, lighten, flatten and change as you wear it. That's part of the material rather than necessarily something that needs correcting.

Look after it, brush it occasionally and intervene when it actually needs it.

Otherwise, let suede behave like suede.