Recently my son realized that he didn’t need a pencil and paper to express his artistic abilities. He found he could use his fingernail to permanently etch his designs onto a leather ottoman. My leather ottoman. Sigh. I knew water wasn’t a good option, so I did some research to see if there was anything I could do to remove the scratches or at least cover them up. Luckily there were a few articles that suggested using oil. There were many types of oil listed. Of all of them, I only had one of them in the house. Olive oil. I decided that it was worth a shot. I’m here to tell you that if your one and only question today is how to remove scratches from leather, you are in luck. I have answers, and I’ll tell you how to do it step by step.
How to Remove Scratches From Leather
First identify what kind of leather you are working with. Check for tags, care instructions, manufacturers contact info, etc. If you have contact information, try calling the manufacturer first to see if the product is under warranty. They may have specific instructions for you to get scratches out. Heck, they might even fix it for you. If you happen to have gotten a leather ottoman at the thrift store six years ago, and there are no tags, and it was old to begin with, and you probably don’t have anything to lose, then we are in the same boat. I didn’t know where else to turn except my trusty friend Google.
Note: This method will NOT work on artificial leather, or vinyl. This is for the real deal, authentic leather. Test on a small, inconspicuous area before treating the entire product. Treating leather with any oil may darken the appearance.
What you need:
Clean, colorfast cloth
olive oil
1. Dab a clean, colorfast cloth into olive oil. Lightly rub affected area in a circular motion. Continue to move outward. The color will look very dark where you applied the oil. It will lighten up as it dries.
Notice how the scratches soak up the oil and appear darker than the rest of the leather. They too, will lighten as it dries.
Continue to rub oil into the leather, feathering out to the non-affected area.
2. Let dry for about 24 hours.
3. If scratches are still somewhat visible, repeat treatment, and let dry for another 24 hours.
Thank you for all the information. I will be trying the leather scratch method this weekend. My cat got scared when we got a puppy and kept crawling up the back of our leather couch. Plus having grandkids means it’s time to clean whole couch and fix scratches, so moving on to find “cleaning leather”.
Thanks for your great tip, I don’t want to buy a new 3 piece so I am going to try your tip tomorrow thanks afain
Thank you for this idea. It works! I made a messenger bag and i put leather on the bottom of it, when i was turning the bag, the leather got all kinds of scruffs on it from my turning it against the fabric and probably from my nails. I tried your method, it WORKED beautifully! Thank you!