This tip is especially important for pigmented shoe cream, but also goes for all liquid creamy shoe care. Don’t think that you’re clever and put out dabs of cream which you plan to rub in consecutively, when leaving cream on the leather there’s a big risk of stains occurring.
This is a mistake that many of us will recognise. Some time early on when one started polishing ones leather shoes, one thought “hey I might just apply some dabs of this shoe cream here and there on the shoe and then rub it out one by one”. Then when we’ve done spreading out all the cream, we notice that there’s stains in the area we left the shoe cream to wait. It can be especially bad on lighter coloured shoes and when darker pigmented shoe cream is used, but also natural coloured creams can go into the grain of the shoes and cause stains. Even if one go over with more pigmented cream the stains might not disappear, and one have to strip the cream off and redo the process. On the top photo you can see an example of how the stains can look.
This shoe cream should be rubbed into a section of the shoes straight away. Top picture: Charlie Hellström
With this article I hope to make save who still haven’t done this mistake from doing it themselves. And it’s very simple, when you apply shoe care products, you should always do it with patience, with small amounts on a cloth or application brush and work it into the leather properly, before continuing with the next part of the shoe. Then you don’t have to worry about creating any stains yourself, you can focus on the ones that inevitably occur during wear.
