What Is Head Grease?
Head Grease Removed Colour
Head grease is caused where your head is positioned on leather for long periods of time and the heat between your head and the leather causes moisture and the sweat from your head penetrates the leather and starts the colour on pigmented leather to peel away.
On aniline leather head greases causes a sweat mark to appear that’s always darker than the leather itself.
This picture shows a grease stain on Aniline Leather caused by sweat from an arm resting on the sofa arm. Arms can cause grease stains on aniline leather as well as on pigmented leather, if your arm is sweating and it’s left on the leather for prolonged periods of time this can cause staining to happen.
Grease Stain On Arm
Other factors that cause grease stains on leather is hair gels and hair dyes, as well as body lotions and creams, it’s advised that leather should be protected at all times to provide a barrier between the surface and the coating to avoid such stains taking place.
Head Grease Protection Image
Grease stains are not just caused by head grease, they can be caused by makeup and oils being spilt on a leather item, like purses.
Grease On A Purse
Head grease can just remove the surface clear coat top lacquer without removing any colour, if you can spot this at this stage, it avoids a more costly repair as the area can just have the clear coat lacquer re applied to the surface sealing this back in again, if left for a longer period of time then this will start to break down the pigment paint that’s been applied to the surface of the leather.
Head grease Removed Clear Coat Lacquer
The clear coat lacquer is what is applied as a final protection layer to leather to seal in the colour and provide a waterproof protection layer.
Head Grease Top Coat
Depending on the type of leather you have will determine the type of repair or restoration that must be taken place. Head grease on Aniline Leather is the worst to handle and in a lot of cases the aniline leather will have to be sprayed a darker colour to help disguise the grease stains that are left behind after extraction of the grease using a gel degreaser.
Pigmented leather is easier to repair and restore depending on how bad the head grease stains are, if they are too bad, they can make the leather very brittle and tears start to appear in these cases it’s best to replace the leather with new.
If the grease is only slight, then a grease removal process can be carried out to extract all the grease and ten wipe down with alcohol cleaner and re apply the pigment coating and seal up with the clear coat lacquers.
Grease On Chair