Leather Care & Repair Specialists

Leather Car Interior Colour Change Guide

The photo on the left shows a front seat of a 1970 Rolls Royce Shadow 2. The colour is red, and in this guide I will explain how to change the colour to cream.

A colour change can be made from any colour to another, i.e. black to white, or white to black, with just as successful results.

The leather colourant kit used in this guide can be used to change the colour of all leather, vinyl, plastic, PVC & leather cloth car interiors.

The first stage is to prep the leather using an abrasive pad. This process removes the transparent manufactured finish applied to leather. Removing the finish allowing colour to properly adhere to the leather.

As shown in the photo, as the finish is removed, so is the colour (but not all the colour). Basically, when you remove some colour form an area, that indicates the finish has been removed, and so, you can move onto the next area.

Once you have prepped an area with the abrasive pad, you often get a lot of prep and colour sitting on the surface. This is very common with old Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Bentley, Aston Martin and other cars that used Connolly leather.

So, we wipe the leather with a cloth to remove the excess prep & colour. This tends not to happen as much with modern cars (1980's +) as the way leather was made changed, becoming more resilient against the prep. Not to worry though, it doesn't affect the end result!

The photo to the left shows what the leather should look like after being prepped. You can see where the colour has almost completely been removed in the middle flutes of the seat. This is indicated by the light tan/brown colour that is showing through - the original leather.

Notice that the shine has also gone making the leather look more matt. This is the main indicator of correctly prepped leather (no shine), as the colour will not always be removed.

Using a cloth, wipe the leather down with the alcohol cleaner. This process removes any waxes, oils or silicones that may be on the leather. Removing these gives better adhesion of colour.

As you can see so far, like any job, preparation is the key to success. Take your time when doing it and your end results will be great. Its not a hard job to do - it can just be quite time consuming!

Fixing Cracking

There is ever so light surface cracking in this seat, it’s probably not necessary to fix, but for the purpose of this guide, and so the end result is that bit better, I'll explain how to repair it.

Using a pallet knife lightly spread the leather repair compound over the leather to fill in cracks and surface abrasions. Leave to dry for 15 minutes and then gently sand with 600+ sandpaper for a lovely smooth finish.

Once the leather has been properly cleaned and all repairs have been made, it is then time to apply the colour.

The first coat is applied by sponge. This is done to work the colour into hard to reach areas and to also minimise later spray applications. As you can see by the photo, the colourant used is highly concentrated and so, changes the colour of the leather quickly.

This photo shows roughly what the leather should look like after one base coat of colour has been applied.

Tips

When applying the base coat do not rub too hard for too long. Instead, applying gentle pressure, wipe the colourant onto the leather with a sponge.

To speed up drying use a hair drier and it should take no more than 5 minutes to be thoroughly dry.

The next step is to spray the leather colourant onto the leather using the airbrush in the kit. To start with, spray the colour around the edges of the piping and in between the seat flutes.

This is covering the harder to reach areas first, which in the end, makes the job easier, and uses less colourant.

Then proceed to spray the colour all over the seats until it looks nice and uniform. Always let the colourant dry before spraying more on top.

Finished Result

This photo shows the two front seats from the car, totally colour changed. We changed them to a specially selected cream by our customer and applied satin finish.

The finish is applied in the exact same way as the colour. The benefit of a finish is it makes the leather look & feel softer and more natural, as well as offering protection from wear & tear.

Colour Charts pre-mixed colours for furniture & car interior