What is Top Grain Leather?
Top Grain Leather
People can be easily mislead into thinking top grain leather is the best leather, full grain leather is actually the best leather you can get.
Top Grain Leather falls into the top part of the corium which is where you get Nubuck leather from.
Further down the hide are where suede leather comes from and then split leathers. Split leather are some of the poorest quality leathers around, they are used on areas like the backs and sides of sofas and to back some fake leathers. Split leathers are also used in the production of bicast leathers, it’s applied and bonded to the reverse of the material.
People get confused about the different types of leather and believe top is the best when full grain is the outside leather hide, showing all natural markings genuine grain pattern, insect bites and so much more.
All leather hides get grades, depending on the quality of the leather skin, this is graded on marks, structure, thickness, make up and so much more, some haver a grade system that works on an A,B,C,D factor and others use a number system from 1 to 10 to grade the leather hides.
There is a big difference between the different leathers, the main difference is top grain has the leather breathability greatly reduced and this can also be embossed on the surface to give it a grain pattern, a great deal of cars and furniture are made from this section of the skin.
It’s a matter of quality and costs when it comes to skins, and stain resistant properties, leather with a more pores surface will be subjected to staining easily, where as a leather that has less breathability will not stain as easily and is more resilient.
Without knowledge its surprising how many think leather is leather and they never think its in layers and different sections can be more costly and it gets split up in to more sections.