What Is Pigment Colour?
Pigment colour is a liquid paint that is used to colour leather.
Pigment Colour make Up
Leather is dyed through first with aniline dyes and then a binder-based pigmentation colour is applied to the surface.
To identify this type of leather you can drop a small amount of water on the surface and this will sit on the surface due to the protection applied with the pigment paint and PU lacquer.
Pigment paints come in thousands of colours and these can be mixed to gain any shade and colour you wish for your leather.
Most car seats and furniture are pigmented leather due to wear and tear issues as it’s very resistant to stains and scuffing.
With pigments these can come in many colours including metallics and florescent colours including glow in the dark colours.
Pigment paints can be applied by hand or sprayed on with something like an airbrush with a 0.5 needle going up to a 0.8 needle size for much larger items like sofas.
High quality pigments don’t require cross linkers as they will have been made originally to be hard wearing and to withstand staining with rub fastness tests.
High quality pigment paints should be able to withstand 100,000 flexes in a flex test.
Pigment paints can be mixed with PU lacquer for use on two tone sofas and antique furniture, this is normally done with the PU lacquer thinned at a rate of 90% lacquer and 10% pigment paint added as the second coat. On a two tone item it is normally translucent so that the base pigment shows through the top coat pigment colour to gain the two tone effect.
Pigment paints when applied can be lightly sanded with sandpaper to make them smooth to free them from any particles of dust that may get in them during the painting process and then lacquered over with a PU lacquer to give the paint protection and to fully waterproof them.
Pigmented leather is the easiest leather to clean due to its protective layers that have been applied by pigmentation in the tannery, in most cases pigment colours are sprayed on in a tannery and finished off normally by hand with a PU lacquer clear coating.
Pigment colour coatings vary in thickness some leather hides will wear quicker than others due to this, but if the coating is more than 0.15mm in thickness it can’t actually be classed as leather by law.
Pigment Paint Colours