How to identify the quality of leather sofa

When it comes to genuine leather sofas, the market is a mixed bag, with options ranging from full leather to imitation leather. So, how do you identify the leather of a genuine leather sofa? This is crucial. If you can tell if a sofa is genuine leather, you can buy a genuine leather sofa at a reasonable price. So, everyone is probably curious about how to identify good leather. It's simple: look, touch, smell, and burn.

First look: Look at the grain. Top-grain cowhide has a natural, irregular texture, and animal fibers on the reverse. A regular, uniform texture indicates split leather or imitation leather, and no animal fibers on the reverse. Also, because top-grain leather has genuine dermal tissue, dyes can penetrate, resulting in minimal or no color difference between the front and back. Conversely, split leather lacks pores, resulting in a significant color difference between the front and back. If the leather sofa manufacturer uses top-grain yellow cowhide, the raw material is excellent.

Second touch: Top-grain leather feels soft, smooth, and skin-friendly, with a springy, stretchy feel. Split-grain or imitation leather, on the other hand, feels dry, plasticky, and lacks elasticity. Furthermore, pressing top-grain leather reveals a change in texture: indentations create fine, radiating lines. Split-grain or imitation leather, on the other hand, only creates indentations without any texture changes. When buying a genuine leather sofa, you can easily tell whether it's top-grain or split-grain by pressing on the surface and observing the changes in the texture.

Third, smell: Top-grain leather has a unique smell, some say it smells stinky, others fragrant. I've been exposed to it more often through my work, and now I smell a fresh fragrance. I remember when I first started in the industry, I always felt that top-grain leather smelled slightly fishy. Split-grain leather or imitation leather smells a faint plasticky odor, which is quite different from top-grain leather. It's like one has a natural smell, while the other has a distinctly industrial flavor. If you have a leather sofa in your living room, you can try smelling the surface to identify it by its scent.

Four-burning: This method is a bit simple and crude. Just cut a small piece and burn it. The first layer of leather smells like burnt hair because it contains protein. Of course, some people say that this smell is the aroma of barbecue, which is not wrong. Imitation leather and second layer of leather will only have that strange and smelly smell of plastic when burned, which is quite unpleasant.

With these four steps, you can basically tell whether the leather is top-grade cowhide. If you don't want to go through so much trouble, just ask the store salesperson and ask them to show you the product information of the sofa. It will all be explained above. If it doesn't, then you can skip this brand and try another one. The product information of the online store is more complete, and the physical store is slightly different, but the product composition of the marked products will also be marked.