Pigmented shoe cream isn’t paint colours, but if one wish one can do quite distinct enhancements of the shade into darker tones. Here’s a walkthrough on how to do this in a good and efficient way to make sure that the colour come out even and nice looking.
First of all, the lighter coloured the shoes, the easier it is to move the colour into darker tones with the use of coloured shoe cream. But, it’s also easier to make it uneven and messy looking. A darker shoe can’t be darkened and changed as much, but it’s rather easy to get a smooth looking result.
A good pair to show what can be done with just shoe cream was my pair of Midas moc toe boots which is made in a natural semi veg tanned leather. I used them quite frequently last winter when they were my pair for the Stitchdown Patina Thunderdome shoe ageing contest, where the almost pink tone went into a very light brown, yellowy one. This year I haven’t used them that much (I don’t wear boots as much as some others, and since I have a new thunderdome pair for the round this winter it’s these boots I wear most now), and with this amount of use it would likely take quite a few years for them to reach that nice tan shade that I ideally would like them to be in. Hence, I decided to speed up the process with the use of pigmented shoe cream.
Here’s a photo I took of my Midas boots last spring after half a year’s use, the right shoe, compared to a brand new one showing how the natural, unfinished semi vegetable tanned leather look.
A mistake many do when wanting to darken light coloured shoes is to start off with a too dark shoe cream. Do this and you easily end up with a slightly mottled and uneven shade, and areas and spots that can become really dark. Sure, if you’re after this then go ahead, but if you want a neater result it’s better to start off with a colour of shoe cream that’s closer to the original one, and lay this as a base. Do use high pigment shoe cream, like Saphir Medaille d’Or, Boot Black, Paul Brunngård, Siegol, Collonil 1909 etc for the best result.
Here’ I’ve applied a first layer of light brown coloured shoe cream on the right boot. On footwear with natural coloured sole edges and contrasting sole stitching, you should make sure to cover this with masking tape.
The trick here is then to add many, thin layers of coloured cream. I did two light brown ones, before moving on to doing several layers of a medium brown shade which darkened it further. Make sure to use an application brush so you reach all areas including towards the sole edges, so you don’t end up with areas that aren’t enhanced in colour, but a regular polishing cloth is often better for all the main areas. You can work the cream into the leather better and more even with a cloth.
First layer of medium brown and one really start to see a change in shade.
Done. A nice tan, light brown shade, easier to wear than the paler, yellowy one they were before. As mentioned would have reached something similar with more wear as well, but when I didn’t wear them that much nowadays it would take a long time, something I didn’t have patience for.
The darker the colour of the shoes, the more difficult it gets to do these quick enhancements of the shade into something darker. It can still be worth it though, you can darken it slightly and surely add a lot more depth in the colour. An example is this pair of TLB Mallorca Artista shoes in Annonay Vegano Burgundy, a leather that can vary in shade depending on batch. My pair was a more reddish burgundy, similar to first pic below, but then with dark burgundy, dark brown and black shoe cream I enhanced the shade into something much nicer, in my eyes. Went about it the same way as described on the Midas boots, just finished it with wax polish for the final touches.
A relatively and flat reddish burgundy can Annonay Vegano be in, as shown here. Picture: Misiu Academy
My pair looked very similar to the above out of the box, but with the use of darker shoe cream and wax polish I got them to this depper burgundy shade. Now with years of use and more cream and wax, they look even nicer than here when new.
