Can suede be washed

Suede is a mate­r­i­al that is capri­cious in terms of care, but due to its beau­ti­ful appear­ance, it is often used in out­er­wear, bags, shoes and gloves. Suede prod­ucts do not tol­er­ate pro­longed con­tact with water. In this regard, when wash­ing suede, it is nec­es­sary to observe a num­ber of restric­tions that relate to the tem­per­a­ture of the water, the clean­ing agents used, the wash­ing tech­nique, and the dry­ing of prod­ucts.

We have pre­pared a list of rec­om­men­da­tions for com­pe­tent wash­ing of suede prod­ucts. Fol­low them to keep your suede in its orig­i­nal appear­ance for a long time.

General recommendations

You can wash suede, but prefer­ably as lit­tle as pos­si­ble.

1. Pow­der and bleach­es are not used when wash­ing suede prod­ucts. We rec­om­mend buy­ing a soap solu­tion or sham­poo designed specif­i­cal­ly for suede;
2. The max­i­mum water tem­per­a­ture is 35°C. If the tem­per­a­ture is exceed­ed, there is a risk of defor­ma­tion of the prod­uct;
3. Suede prod­ucts can­not be soaked;
4. The suede item is com­plete­ly wash­able. If you wash only one or two sec­tions, then stains will appear on its sur­face;
5. Before wash­ing, we rec­om­mend turn­ing the prod­ucts inside out first;
6. Such prod­ucts can­not be squeezed and twist­ed — this will lead to their defor­ma­tion.

There are spe­cial clean­ers for cer­tain suede prod­ucts. For exam­ple, for shoes, you can pur­chase a clean­ing foam: just apply it to the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area, spread it over the sur­face, remove the remain­ing prod­uct with a flan­nel cloth and dry it.

Read the label before wash­ing any suede prod­uct. The man­u­fac­tur­er indi­cates the restric­tions and accept­able ways to clean things.

It’s also worth doing a test. If the suede item has a small test piece of mate­r­i­al, wash it, dry it and eval­u­ate the result. In the absence of such mate­r­i­al, try wash­ing an incon­spic­u­ous area of ​​the thing.

If the pol­lu­tion is small and appeared recent­ly, it may be worth lim­it­ing to dry clean­ing.

Hand wash suede

Hand wash is the best option for suede prod­ucts, espe­cial­ly gloves and bags. When wash­ing the bag, check all pock­ets and inter­nal com­part­ments for keys, coins, cards, etc.

Next, pre­pare the soap solu­tion:

1. Grate a lit­tle baby or laun­dry soap on a coarse grater (you can use a knife);
2. Dilute the chips in a con­tain­er with warm water;
3. Wait until the soap is com­plete­ly dis­solved.

4. Place the thing in the solu­tion. Clean the prod­uct using a brush with hard bris­tles. Do not use a sponge, oth­er­wise the dirt will pen­e­trate deep­er into the mate­r­i­al.

5. It is not nec­es­sary to com­plete­ly place the suede prod­uct in a con­tain­er of soapy water. You can moist­en the brush in the solu­tion and, putting the thing on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, clean all the dirt from it.

If you wash gloves, then put them on your hands — this way you will keep the shape of the prod­ucts. Wash suede gloves as infre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble, as they shrink a lot.

The final stage of wash­ing is rins­ing. Add a lit­tle vine­gar or ammo­nia to a con­tain­er of clean water. Thanks to vine­gar, the suede prod­uct will again become soft and vel­vety, and alco­hol will well remove shiny shine from the sur­face. It is advis­able to rinse the prod­uct sev­er­al times — there­by min­i­miz­ing the risk of stains.

Washing suede in the machine

A suede dress or jack­et is more con­ve­nient to wash in a type­writer. If you are wash­ing suede shoes, place them in a mesh bag. Also add a few tow­els or oth­er heavy items to min­i­mize the defor­ma­tion of the shoe. How­ev­er, if you are wash­ing a dress or gloves, then you should not add oth­er things to them.

Set the min­i­mum tem­per­a­ture and the del­i­cate wash. Spin­ning is nec­es­sar­i­ly turned off, and rins­ing is set to a min­i­mum.

Wash­ing time is min­i­mal, since a long stay of suede in water risks lead­ing to cracks on the sur­face of the mate­r­i­al. The best option is no more than 15 min­utes.

Expen­sive things are rec­om­mend­ed to be washed in dry clean­ing. Spe­cial­ists can use spe­cial meth­ods of clean­ing suede — for exam­ple, wet clean­ing.

Folk ways to clean suede

1. Chalk removes grease stains. Crum­ble it, pour it on the stain and iron it with a bare­ly warm iron through a paper tow­el;
2. By wip­ing glossy spots with an ordi­nary school eras­er, you will quick­ly remove them;
3. Bak­ing soda also removes grease stains. Add it to a con­tain­er of warm water when wash­ing things;
4. To restore the shade of brown suede shoes, apply fresh cof­fee grounds to it and wipe the prod­uct;
5. If your suede is heav­i­ly soiled, hold it over a pot of boil­ing water or under a hot steam iron.

How to dry suede

Squeeze gen­tly to remove excess water. Lay it out on a flat, hor­i­zon­tal sur­face. If you hang a suede jack­et, dress or even a bag on a coat hang­er, then the weight of the absorbed liq­uid deforms the whole thing.

To keep the shape of gloves or shoes when dry­ing, place soft paper inside. Change it from time to time to speed up the dry­ing process. It is not nec­es­sary to stuff the prod­uct too tight­ly with paper so that it does not stretch.

Dry the prod­uct away from heaters and oth­er heat sources.

Atten­tion! If, after dry­ing, creas­es have formed on the prod­uct, they are elim­i­nat­ed with the help of hot steam. Use a ket­tle with boil­ing water or a steam­er.

Most often, dry­ing prod­ucts takes up to 2 days. After dry­ing, clean and knead the item using a brush. If you need to restore the soft­ness of the prod­uct, use glyc­erin by wip­ing the sur­face of the suede.

And in order to wash the thing as infre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble in the future (and keep its appear­ance for a long time), fol­low 4 rules:

1. Dust your suede reg­u­lar­ly with a soft brush;
2. Do not wear suede items in rainy, wet weath­er;
3. If you find a stain on suede, remove it imme­di­ate­ly — this way you min­i­mize the con­tact of the mate­r­i­al with mois­ture;
4. Nev­er use clean­ing agents con­tain­ing chlo­rine, ace­tone.

Store suede prod­ucts in a spe­cial case that pre­vents dust and moths from enter­ing.