Tips On How To Get Paint off Leather

The leather details and seats in your vehicle give a premium feel to its interiors. A blot of paint can ruin the look very easily, especially if it’s somewhere noticeable. Getting the paint off can be even more of a struggle. Here are some tips on how to remove paint from leather.

Identifying Your Leather

Many vehicle manufacturers use leatherette to cut down on costs and environmental impact. However, many still boast of real leather seats and detailing or a partial-leather option. Because cleaning faux leather is different from cleaning real leather, it’s important to identify what type of leather seats you have.

You can look around for a label around your seats to find out if the leather in your vehicle is synthetic or real. But, if you can’t find one and you’re attempting to remove dried paint from leather, try the following:

The Touch Test

Faux leather has a smooth feel to it similar to plastic. Real leather, on the other hand, has a grainy feel while being soft and flexible. Real leather stretches while faux leather does not. Also, while synthetic leather is cooler to the touch, real leather feels warm.

The Smell Test

The smell of real leather is one of its distinguishing features. The scent is a little oaky and quite unique. Faux leather lacks this smell entirely.

Cleaning Paint off Real Leather

Real leather is more difficult to clean than faux leather as it can be much more absorbent and sensitive to different cleaning materials. When trying out how to remove paint from real leather seats, try the following:

Have the Right Tools

Use a soft, clean cloth or a soft brush to clean your vehicle’s leather parts. You don’t want to risk scratching the leather while cleaning. As for cleaning solutions, you can opt to use cooking or olive oil with vinegar and baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and a gentle soap with water, rubbing alcohol with a leather conditioner, or petroleum jelly. We’ll go over more specific tips for these methods later on in the article.

Always Spot Test

Leather and the different dyes used to color and treat it can cause it to react differently to different cleaning methods. Before you commit to cleaning an entire seat in your vehicle, do a spot test on an area that’s out of the way and not too visible or noticeable. If the spot test doesn’t show any adverse effects to your cleaning method, you can proceed with cleaning.

Tips for Different Cleaning Solutions

Once you’ve chosen a cleaning solution you’d like to try, keep in mind the following tips:

Rubbing Alcohol

When using rubbing alcohol to clean your leather, remember to use a leather conditioner afterwards. The chemical makeup of rubbing alcohol can be rather harsh on the leather, leading to damage if the leather isn’t properly conditioned after. When targeting a paint stain with rubbing alcohol, be sure to get the alcohol on the stain instead of the surrounding areas as it can cause discoloration.

Warm Water

If you’re lucky, you can also clean the paint from your leather seats using nothing but warm water. This will likely work on more soluble paints. Stronger paints like acrylics and those used on walls might not wash off as easily. Spray the warm water onto the stain using a spray bottle and leave it for up to 20 minutes to get the paint off.

Soap and Water

You can make a water and soap solution using gentle soap powder. Rub the solution on your cloth. If the paint stain remains on the leather afterwards, you can also apply some hydrogen peroxide.

Petroleum Jelly

Using petroleum jelly is known to moisten and loosen paint stains from leather. Simply dampen the stain with the jelly and leave it for a few minutes. You can then scrape it off using a plastic card or a gentle scraper. Just be careful not to scratch the leather.

Cleaning Paint off Synthetic Leather

Synthetic leather is much more forgiving than real leather when it comes to cleaning, but we still recommend doing a spot test. The tips listed above for real leather should work for synthetic leather as well, but here are a few exclusives for faux leather:

Use a Toothbrush

To get into the deeper cracks and crevasses of synthetic leather, make use of a soft toothbrush and scrub in gentle circles. Don’t press too hard to avoid scratching though.

Use a Textured Cloth

You can also use a more textured cloth when rubbing your cleaning solution into the paint stain. This will let you reach the more textured areas of your synthetic leather seats or details.

A vehicle’s leather seats and details no doubt give it a very premium look and feel. However, any spots or stains on the leather can quickly take away from this prestigious image, especially when it’s from something as difficult to remove as paint. So get those paint stains off and keep your vehicle’s leatherwork looking its best with these cleaning tips.