I was cleaning and conditioning my seats today and some of the dye off of my willow seats rubbed off! Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to fix this? If so, where to buy what I need to fix it? I'm really bummed...

Car is barely over a year old (only 6700 miles) in perfect shape and now this...sigh.

 

The dye rubbed off? Sounds like maybe the top layer of leather rubbed off, in which case an uphosterer would need to fix it. I might be wrong though.

More importantly - when you say you were cleaning and conditioning your seats - what were you using, and how often do you use it? Over-conditioning leather is as bad for it as letting it dry out. Folks that condition their leather weekly, or even monthly in some cases, will almost definintely notice problems sooner than someone who conditions every 4-6 months, or as needed. Just wondering, since you mentioned the car is only a year old.

 

I was using Lexol. I usually condition every 2 months or so. What the spot looks like is like a light scuff (looks darker when wet). I figured it might be that the dye rubbed off, but you might be right. The spot is on the perforated portion of the leather.

 

Any chance you could take a picture of it? The fact that it looks darker when wet leads me to believe the top layer of leather has been rubbed off/worn through. Seems kind of premature if you only have 6700 miles. My car has almost 50k with no leather damage, however I have black leather, which is easier to maintain.

So ya, take a picture - you might be able to dye it back to the original color, but it's sounding like you'll need an upholsterer to take a look at it. They would likely just re-dye it too, but I'm sure they'll do a quality job.

And conditioning every 2 months is probably ok. I do my car every 6, but I doubt a couple months here or there will matter.

 

Here's a picture of the scuff. I used the macro function to try to get better detail. Do you think the spot will be able to be re-dyed or will the whole seat have to be re-dyed?

 

That doesn't look too bad. My business does leather, vinyl repairs amongst other things. A good repair person can match the dye closely and give it a light spray but it's possible a larger area may have to be covered to get a color match blended. It will not likely be as permanent as the original dye.

 

Ah, that isn't nearly as bad as I thought. RBull is the expert, sounds like you "lucked out".

 

Thank you all for your help! I really appreciate it. I've got a call into a leather dye/repair company here in town to see what can be done and what it will cost.