How to Prevent Jeans from Staining Leather Goods

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Updated: 10/12/2021 | How to Prevent Jeans from Staining Leather Goods

One of the biggest causes of stains on leather is jeans. It can be very frustrating when a pair of jeans destroys your leather goods. And it’s even MORE annoying if those leather goods are worth hundreds of dollars.

In this article, we’ll share tips on how you can prevent jeans from staining your leather goods as well as some tips on how to remove the stains.

We’ve found that the best ways to prevent leather from getting stained are as follows:

Use Leather Protectants
Setting the Dye on Your Jeans
Create a Buffer
Clean Your Leather Goods Regularly
Avoid Jeans!
Choose Dark Colored Leather Goods
Brand Of Jeans

Besides preventing jeans stains and ultimately other types of stains from your leather items, each of these hacks can be accomplished easily, without causing any damage to your cherished leather goods, and more importantly, without breaking the bank! Now let me not waste any time and let’s get started learning about how to prevent jeans stains from leather!

Not only will I share my favorite jeans-stains prevention hacks, but I will provide links straight to Amazon where necessary so you can purchase what you would need for a particular method.

1. Using Leather Protectants

Leather protectants are excellent for putting a barrier between the leather material and the jeans or colored clothes you would wear.

On your bags, shoes, garments, furniture, accessories, and other leather upholsteries, leather protectants will place a solid protective layer on the surface of your leather goods.

This is so that when the leather items come into contact with jeans or any other material that can potentially stain the leather, it will be better protected.

This method would be particularly necessary if the leather material used is semi-finish or unfinished. These types of leathers stain more easily and are more susceptible to jeans stains becoming permanent.

This doesn’t mean you can not leather-protect finished leathers too. Using a leather protectant on your finished leather and even patent leather goods is also going to be super helpful.

The way and manner in which fully-finished leathers and patent leather gets stained will sometimes be mind-blowing so you would need some protection on them just to be safe.

This now begs the question: which leather protectants do I go for? There are several brands of leather protectants out there formulated to do just about the same thing – which is to protect your leather from staining.

Others may come with additional features like UV protection for the leather.

My go-to leather protectant for my car at the moment is the 303 Protectant Automotive Interior And Exterior Protectant. This product is excellent for preventing dye transfer and also creates a solid barrier that prevents the dyes from setting into the leather.

And when it comes to my general leather goods, my go-to leather protectant is usually the Leather Master Protection Cream.

You can find all the above-mentioned items on Amazon!

2. Set The Dyes On Your Jeans

Another great way to prevent jeans stains on your leather is to set the dyes on your jeans. What this means is you’re going lock the dyes on the jeans so it doesn’t come off easily.

You can do this for both your old and new jeans. If you’re like me and you enjoy the feeling of wearing new jeans then you’re certainly not going to be happy with this method.

Jeans or denim are dyed with indigo and are made in a way that the jeans gradually lose their dyes so as to build a peculiar character that’s only synonymous with the lifestyle of the user.

This is why jeans will inevitably fade or lose their color with time. This is also why not all jeans are or will look the same.

So when your jeans lose their color all those colors gradually get transferred to things that came into contact with them.

In which case this is going to include car seats, home/office furniture, shoes, etc.

This is why setting the dyes and having it locked in on your jeans so it does not come off easily is going to be super important when it comes to preventing jeans stains or dye bleeding.

So, how do you do this? You can simply set dyes on jeans by washing them with a 1/2 cup of white vinegar. After this is done, you can rewash your jeans with your regular laundry detergent.

Doing this will help prevent the jeans from rubbing off on your leather goods and also prevent fading when you wash them.

3. Regularly Cleaning Your Leather

This is probably something I do a lot due to my OCD. I’m pretty obsessed with regularly cleaning my leather items.

And because of this compulsive behavior, I have learned the hard way cleaning your leather too regularly can actually harm your leather item than do it good.

So in more recent years I have learned to properly clean my leather goods so that daily wear doesn’t affect the leather so much.

When it comes to preventing jeans or denim stains from leather, regularly cleaning your leather item is key.

This will help to get rid of the daily jeans dye stains your leather takes on so that it doesn’t build up and cause a permanent stain.

But the cleaning has to do well and at the right interval. Generally, you would want to clean your leather daily using leather wipes and routinely throughout the year.

Leather wipes are specially formulated to safely remove dirt and stains from leather without harming the leather.

One of the best leather cleanings wipes on the market that I have tried that is anti-stain and as well remove jeans dye stains, dirt, and all other forms of day-to-day staining are the 303 protectant wipes. It’s affordable and helps to repel stains from leather.

When it comes to routinely cleaning your leather goods, it’s ideal to clean your leather 2 to 3 times a year depending on how frequently you use the leather items.

Typically, boots and shoes will need thorough cleaning about 3-4 times a year, while leather goods like wallets, coaches, sofas, car seats, etc will require cleaning just about 1-2 times a year.

There’s a simple hack that I find to be very useful when I want something that requires no cost, super quick, but effective.

I use a microfiber cloth with warm water to wipe down the surface of my leather items.

I would usually do this about twice every month would typically last about 3-5minutes. But I would always make sure to condition my leather on the 3rd or 4th month so that my leather did not dry out.

Being consistent with this warm water routine helps to remove all traces of dye transfers.

4. Go For Dark-Colored Leather Goods

My fourth hack for how to prevent jeans stains on leather is to always go for dark-colored leather goods. Lighter-colored leather goods seem to make the slightest stains very obvious.

This hack will be applicable if you’re reading this article and you’re yet to get leather goods. If this is not you and you’re all set up and just looking for a way to preserve your leather from jeans stains then this hack might only help you for your next leather goods shopping spree.

Going for dark-colored leather items wouldn’t stop the jeans stains but will make it less obvious.

If you’re like me who can not stand stains and little blemishes of this nature on your leather items, then taking a raincheck on the fancy white and other lighter-colored leathers will be the way to go.

There are colors that are absolutely perfect for leather goods such as black, dark browns, dark greys, dark blue, and a host of others that would help to hide stains.

5. Simply Don’t Wear Jeans

Choosing not to wear jeans completely when you’re using non-dark colored leather articles is obviously a guaranteed way to prevent jeans stains from your leather goods.

Not all Jeans will bleed dyes onto your leather items. So before you deprive yourself of not wearing your favorite jeans clothing you need to test out if your jeans will stain or not.

You can do a quick test by rubbing a damp white cloth on the surface of your jeans. If it bleeds or stains, you will immediately see traces of dyes on your white damp cloth. You can also try the test without dampening the cloth.

After doing the test and you find out your jeans bleeds, you would want to avoid wearing those particular jeans whenever you use your light-colored leather item.

You also wouldn’t want to wear your jeans when there’s high humidity or when it rains to prevent perspiring jeans dyes onto your leather.

6. Use Covers

If possible or applicable, you can use leather covers for your leather goods whenever you use your leather items. For example, you can install seat covers on your car seats to prevent all kinds of stains from your leather car seats.

If you’re frugal like me, you can throw on some rags or towels on your seats whenever you wear your jeans clothing.

Using towels and covers to prevent jeans stains on leather will be a cost-effective way of preventing jeans stains.

But this will as well be a definite pain in the neck if you have to always remember your throw rugs or towels each time you or a passenger wears a pair of jeans.

7. Brand Of Jeans

There are jeans brands that would generally not bleed dyes or cause stains on your leather.

These are the types of jeans you would want to go for to prevent jeans or denim stains on your leather items.

Some well-known brand of jeans that will not stain your leather include:

Old Navy
Everlane
NYDJ
Good American
Old Navy
Boden

While the above-mentioned jeans are generally known not to bleed dyes or stain things that come into contact with them or when washed, you would still want to do the dye transfer test (rubbing dampened white cloth on the jeans) before going ahead to use it with your leather goods.

How to Remove Stains from Leather

We’ve tried multiple methods and have found the following to be the best ways to remove stains from your leather goods. We’ve tried different methods on different types and brands of leather bags, so we highly recommend trying them all until you find a method that works on your particular leather good.

Gently wipe your purse with a damp rag to remove the stain.
Use leather soap to remove stains. Mix the soap with water, grab a rag and dab the stain until it comes out.
Use baby wipes to gently swab and remove the stains.
Use the Mister Clean Magic Eraser to remove stains. We’ve found that the magic eraser works really well on shoes.
Soak a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol. Dab the stain and then wipe it immediately with a rag wet with hot water. You can also dab on a little bit of color-safe bleach and then in 15 to 20 minutes, blot the stain with a wet rag.
Use a leather cleaner. We’ve tried this leather cleaner by CarGuys and it works wonders. Get a cloth rag, spray some of the cleaner on the rag and gently blot the stain until it’s gone.

As for preventing it… I assume your jeans are probably indigo, and also relatively new? If so, I wouldn’t use light-coloured bags with those jeans again until the dye has worked its way out some more. Alternately, wear a coat or sweater that will sit between the jeans and your bag. Sorry, I don’t think there is a quick fix for that!

Final THOughts

Jeans stains on leather is a major problem among many leather users. But when you search the internet for this topic you will only find a lot of content on how to removed jeans stains from leather with little information actually addressing how to prevent the jeans stains from the leather.

So in this article, I sought to fill in the gap to help those of you who are simply looking for ways to prevent jeans stains from your precious leather goods.

All in all, there are 3 main takeaways from this article when it comes to preventing jeans stains from your leather items. You can either address the issue by focusing on surface treatments for your leather or setting the dyes on your jeans or a combination of the two.

In most cases, the optimal way to prevent jeans stains from your leather will be to use products to treat the surface of your leather combined with treating your jeans.

Personally, I usually steer towards a product that puts a barrier between the leather and the color of the jeans.

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