Leather furniture is available in a variety of styles, from contemporary to traditional. The tanned color and warm feeling exuded by leather make it a welcome addition to any space. The advance of leather furniture and fashions in living rooms across the world really show how leather-working has advanced.
Handcrafted Leather Furniture
One of the more admirable qualities of leather furniture is the high quality and presence of American made products on the market. Being a natural and organic material, leather furniture is rarely imported from third world factories due to the painstaking attention to detail and logistical challenges behind transporting leather from cattle ranch to factory. American companies like Elite Furniture in Southern California have been handcrafting leather furniture for decades with a bevy of original designs.
Shopping for Leather Furniture
When looking for leather furniture in your home, you are likely to find the following materials in showrooms across the country:
- Top Grain Leather
- Corrected Grain Leather
- Split Leather
- Bi-Cast Leather
Top Grain Leather Furniture is created using only the best sections of the hide. These hides are typically left in their most natural state; the hair is removed from the original hide, but the remaining fiber is left in its strongest natural state. Top grain leather is often referred to as "bomber leather", for the vintage jackets made popular in the early 1930s by US bomber pilots.
Corrected Grain Leather Furniture can be created from top grain or inferior grain leather. Corrected grain leather furniture is sanded and buffed to a glossy shine. This process makes the leather furniture smooth and shiny while hiding any imperfections in the hide, usually left by insect bites, branding, or scars. Often times, an artificial grain is applied to the leather and a solid pigment is used to further conceal imperfections. Top grain corrected leather is difficult to verify: look for natural imperfections and grain patterns.
Split leather Furniture is created with the part of the hide found just below the top grain of the raw hide. This layer is split away from top of the hide and is fuzzy in nature. This is the layer commonly used to create suede. This material is often bonded with glues and pressed into a flat shape, mimicking a full grain leather.
Bi-Cast leather furniture is becoming increasingly popular, as the low leather content of this material allows it to use waste leather material that would otherwise be destroyed. Buyer beware, although the recipe bonds the leather to a polyurethane coating that is durable and long lasting, many imports use a compromised formula that uses low quality chemicals, creating leather furniture that cracks and discolors easily.
Learn more about recent developments in eco-friendly leather.
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