Help! Leather belt dye stained white leather sofa. Any ideas?

[MrX]

I've a bit of a problem. I'm renting an apartment which has a white leather sofa and unfortunately someone's leather belt has stained the surface of the sofa in a few places.

Does anyone know of anything that would take this out?

I have tried a few things :

Soap and water and gentle scrubbing with a towel.
Household cleaner (carefully) which contained mild oxygen bleach
Stain Devil's ink remover
Laundry detergent (Skip [Spanish version of UK Persil])

none of these have had any impact whatsoever.

Does anyone have any idea what I should do?

Perhaps I need a solvent based cleaner or something??

 

[michaelman2]

mrx,

I am not certain, but you may need now to try and cover the stain with a white dye...?...I am afraid that some of the cleaners you mentioned above will abbrade the leather and make things worse on the area and around it. Maybe a white shoe polish carefully applied to the stain? My guess is that is has absorbed into the natural skin and will not come out.

 

[cleanteamofny]

Try Mr. Clean eraser with hair spray.
Test a small area for blemish or discoloring.

 

[MrX]

Thanks for the tips !

In the end, I managed to get a specialist leather cleaner product from a sofa shop! It worked a charm and was solvent based.

The problem was that it was actually leather dye that had seeped into the sofa from the cheapo leather belt so it was much more difficult to remove than a normal stain as the leather was effectively stained with an unfixed dye.

It took a bit of effort, but the end result is perfect. You wouldn't know it ever happened.

I think the rule of thumb is NEVER BUY A WHITE LEATHER SOFA!

 

[sudsmaster]

I would never buy any furniture with a white covering, at least if it can't be completely removed and laundered regularly.

Same goes for white carpeting. Generally a bad idea.

But nice to see you solved your stain problem. I suspect your guest with the cheap leather belt will in future be asked to sit on the floor, lol.