shoes - anti-rain spray & polishing

[greentorii]

Hi,

I have a new pair of leather shoes and I want to protect them with those sprays that repells water and dirt.

The thing is, if i decide to polish my shoes a few months down the road, do I need to reapply the spray-repellent?

should I polish my NEW shoes first before spraying the repellent?

thanks!

 

[PandArts]

I would just invest in a good pair ofgolashes/wets/overshoes.

 

[greentorii]

Hi, thank you for your suggestion pandarts,

however,

1) these shoes aren't that good to need overshoes
2) i am 21, and i think overshoes look totally un-fashionable
3) i don't think i'll be using overshoes even when i'm 40 haha =)

 

[Shikar]

Just follow the usual care (polish/wax/brush/shoe trees etc) for leather shoes as found in numerous threads, no need for extra sprays etc. if you dont like overshoes.

Regards.

 

[Siggy]

I never use those protection sprays for anything except suede. For regular leather I just use a good shoe wax (Saphir, Kiwi).

Polish your shoes with a good shoe wax before wearing them the first time. That way they are protected enough and if you get some scuffs they can often be buffed out, and a bit of rain won't hurt them. Get a good horsehair brush to polish the shoes with.

 

[Roger]

Good advice above. I'd go one step further and suggest that you absolutely not spray your shoes for protection from the elements. Most sprays contain silicone as the key water repellant, and silicone is just very bad for the leather of dress and casual shoes. These sprays are designed to be used with hiking/hunting boots, where the leather is not finely-finished as it is on shoes and dress boots. The sprays designed for suede are fine (noted by Siggy), and I'd recommend spraying suede with one of the better suede sprays, but don't spray regular non-suede leather.

In your shoe-care sessions, be sure to use a paste wax on your shoes. You could also use a shoe cream first--many of us do this to restore color and moisturize the leather--but it's the wax-polish (the stuff in the flat cans, not bottles) finishing coat that provides you with the protection against the elements. These shoe polishes will have beeswax or carnauba (better) in them.

 

[JayJay]

Originally Posted by Roger

Good advice above. I'd go one step further and suggest that you absolutely not spray your shoes for protection from the elements. Most sprays contain silicone as the key water repellant, and silicone is just very bad for the leather of dress and casual shoes. These sprays are designed to be used with hiking/hunting boots, where the leather is not finely-finished as it is on shoes and dress boots. The sprays designed for suede are fine (noted by Siggy), and I'd recommend spraying suede with one of the better suede sprays, but don't spray regular non-suede leather.

In your shoe-care sessions, be sure to use a paste wax on your shoes. You could also use a shoe cream first--many of us do this to restore color and moisturize the leather--but it's the wax-polish (the stuff in the flat cans, not bottles) finishing coat that provides you with the protection against the elements. These shoe polishes will have beeswax or carnauba (better) in them.
+1. I would not use the sprays, instead be sure to regularly clean and polish your shoes. Although overshoes offer the best protection, with regularly polishing, they'll be fine in bad weather.

 

[TheDroog]

I've used Nikwax waterproofing on my hiking boots and a pair of beater dress shoes.

It darkens the leather slightly but it works great -- water beads right off the boots. You'll need to reapply it every year or so because its efficacy fades over time. While I might hesitate using this product on an expensive of dress shoes, for your purposes it should be fine. In fact, I think it is an excellent idea to use Nikwax on 1 pair of shoes for very rainy days.

 

[lullemans72]

I'm posting here because I have a similar question about waterproofing your dress shoes.

I also have been using waterproofing sprays on both my suede shoes and my leather dress shoes (though I haven't seen the spray I use to contain silicone).

What I have learned is that one should apply spray on the shoes about once every six months, or after the shoes have become wet due to rain. But what I'm not sure about is something that happened recently: I applied waterproof spray onto the shoes I'd recently bought, but as I then used them a few days later, I noticed one of the shoes had some scuff marks on them when I came home. So I polished both shoes and the scuff marks were gone. But this made me wonder if I should have applied a new coat of waterproofing spray since I thought the previous coat might have disappeared due to the polishing. If that is the case, that would mean a new coat of waterproofing would have to be applied every time I polish the shoes, which I thought would be a bit much.

 

[Fred G. Unn]



What I have learned is that one should apply spray on the shoes about once every six months, or after the shoes have become wet due to rain.
...
If that is the case, that would mean a new coat of waterproofing would have to be applied every time I polish the shoes, which I thought would be a bit much.

I assume most people around here would not recommend using any sort of waterproofing spray on calf leather at all. Personally, I use NanoProtector on suede, but would never apply it to calf. You might want to post your query in the Official Shoe Care Thread, but I doubt using a spray on calf leather dress shoes will be a very popular decision. I'm not sure why it would even be needed.

 

[Cleav]

I would like to be associated with the words of the last speaker

 

[RTD1]

What about Alden Leather Defender for shell?

 

[lullemans72]

I assume most people around here would not recommend using any sort of waterproofing spray on calf leather at all. Personally, I use NanoProtector on suede, but would never apply it to calf. You might want to post your query in the Official Shoe Care Thread, but I doubt using a spray on calf leather dress shoes will be a very popular decision. I'm not sure why it would even be needed.

Cheers for the reply.

Thanks for letting me know about the official shoe care thread. I'm quite new to the forum and haven't yet explored all the different threads there are. My bad.

As for why I thought spray was needed on leather shoes, I simply assumed that while a fresh polish might add a protective layer onto the leather, it still won't be very effective against rain, as I didn't think the polish contained any real water repelling features like water repelling spray does.

 

[Adria]

Sorry for necro posting, but just in case somebody will stumble upon this thread with the same question: what's the order of applying waterproofing spray and shoe cream.

I've managed to find only one advice on this topic: Always apply the waterproofing spray before other care products such as shoe polish. This is because the spray works deep in the inner of the leather, whereas the shoe polish takes care of the upper layers (it's from Collonil faq or something like that).

Hope that helps

 

[Cleav]

If anyone stumbles across this thread they should read post 10 by @Fred G. Unn as the definitive answer