What is Top Grain Leather?

What is Top Grain Leather? It’s is the second strongest type of leather you can get. This is the most common leather found in most expensive leather products because it has a uniform finish and is cheaper and easier to work with than Full Grain Leather. Top Grain has a uniform look because it is sanded, buffed and snuffed to remove imperfections in the leather. Sanding and buffing unfortunately removes the most dense grains of the fiber and makes this leather weaker than Full Grain Leather. Top grain leather has a smooth, slightly shiny, or plastic-like look to it because of its finish coat. It has a finish coat applied after they are sanded and buffed. This finish coat creates a partial moisture barrier  since it no longer has its natural grain layer.

Top Grain Leather is more stain resistant, but not the best.

Top Grain Leather can be more stain resistant than other types of leather because it has a finish coat. That finish coat needs to be applied to create a protective barrier against moisture because of the loss of its natural grain protective layer. This sanded & buffed leather will eventually lose its protective finish coat since it will crack or peel over time. At that point this second best quality leather will become more stain prone than its full grain leather counterpart.

Second best quality leather

Top Grain Leather is the second best quality leather. It’s topped by Full Grain Leather because full grain is stronger, ages better, and lasts longer. It is however better than other weaker leathers like genuine and bonded leather.