Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Bonded Leather

Customers should be careful when buying furniture made from "Bonded Leather". Bonded leather or reconstituted leather is a material made of varying degrees of genuine leather combined with other substances to give the appearance of leather at reduced cost. There is a difference between bonded leather and Naugahyde or Faux Leather. Bonded leather is made from the scraps of leather which have been ground up and laid flat with a finish on top. This finish is then plaited (stamped) with a pattern to have the look of full grain leather. Faux leather or Naugahyde is a plastic material with a tricot backing and then stamped or plaited to give it the look of leather. A customer came to me recently wanting me to repair her leather sofa. She was told it was bonded leather and yet when she showed me the sample of the material, it was not leather, but indeed it was faux leather. When a customer buys bonded leather furniture, they should ask the seller to confirm that there is actually leather in the material.