Have you ever sat on your leather couch or sofa and immediately jump right out of it because it felt cold and wondered why that’s the case? Well, I have had that experience more than once and wondered why this happened.
I spent some time researching the reasons why leather feels cold and I’m ready to share with you all the interesting findings I made.
So, why does leather feel cold? There are 4 main reasons why leather feels cold and these are;
- Leather Will Feel Cold Due To The Weather
- Leather Will Feel Cold Due To The Nature Of Our Skin
- Leather Will Feel Cold Because It’s Finish
- Non-Insulated Floors Can Cause leather To Feel Cool
To learn more about why leather feels cold, keep reading this article to find out more.
1. Leather Will Feel Cold Due To The Weather
This was my first guess when I set out to find out why leather feels cold. And of course, I was right.
Leather can get extremely cold when the weather is cold.
You will typically have your leather furniture, bags, jackets, feeling very cold especially during the winter seasons.
This is one of the key characteristic difference between an item made from leather and other materials such as fabric.
In some cases, this is a good thing while in other cases this can be extremely uncomfortable.
But there is an interesting twist.
I know from the above explanation you might be thinking or recalling how cold your leather item was even when it wasn’t the winter season.
You’re absolutely right. Leather is always cold.
You might have noticed that no matter how warm your home is, your leather furniture may sometimes remain cold.
But this cannot change the fact that one primary reason leather will be cold will be the weather.
2. Leather Will Feel Cold Due To The Nature Of Our Skin
Our skin is the largest sensory organ of the body. It’s one exceptional way we get to explore our environment through the sense of touch.
It ensures we are able to perceive all the changes in our environment both pleasurable ones and those that aren’t.
The skin is good at sensing the changes in temperature but very bad at actually distinguishing between temperatures.
To the skin, anything that conducts heat well will usually feel cold. This will usually happen due to heat being pulled from the skin.
And on the other hand, an insulator will generally have a neutral feel or a warm feel.
A good example is a metal and wood. While a metal surface will feel very cold, a wooden surface will not be quite as much even when both surfaces are actually the same temperature.
This same analogy applies to a leather and something like a fabric-made item.
3. Leather Will Feel Cold Because Of It’s Finish
There are different types of leather. The broad categories will be natural leathers and synthetic leathers.
Synthetic leathers are made to imitate real leathers. It’s the go-to material for people who do not want to consume animal products.
Synthetic leathers will usually have a polyvinyl acetate finishing on its surface.
This makes synthetic leathers less breathable which allows it to retain and feel cold.
Today, you will also find that a lot of natural leathers are also finished with substantial amounts of synthetic top coats – usually to make it a lot more durable and resistant.
The top coatings placed on these natural leathers are also synthetic and will also cause the leather surface to feel cold.
Leathers like the semi-aniline and aniline leathers are usually made without any form of heavy synthetic finishes or synthetic top coatings.
So because of this, they tend to be a lot more breathable and retains body heat quickly, and will stay warm for a long time.
All this made me realized why my leather sofas made from real leather did quite well during the wintertime.
I now understood why I found myself drawn to the real leather furniture as it tends to hold in the body heat much better than my fabric pieces of furniture.
Real leather goods don’t come cheap but the trade-off of price can not be compared to how long real leather goods last and how comfy and cozy they are throughout the seasons of the year.
4. Non-Insulated Floors
Here’s a factor that has nothing to do with leather but can greatly contribute to making your leather items feel cold.
Floors that are not insulated are known to cause the entire house to lose up to 11% of the heat contained in it.
This will let the floor of the house to retain a lot of colds. This then gets transferred to the leather furniture placed or other leather items stored in the house.
In this type of situation using rugs is going to add a layer of insulation to the floor that will help regulate the temperature quite a bit around the house.
This will help keep the space around the house warm and the warmer your space is, the warmer your leather furniture will be.
How To Keep Your Leather Items Warm
There are a couple of things I have mentioned in this article that are all a good way to keep leather warm and cozy.
However, chances are you came looking for an article like this due to how cold your leather furniture specifically gets.
So here, I would like to spend a couple of paragraphs to share with you some simple ways to help keep your leather furniture warm.
Covering Them With Blankets
Sometimes it’s the simple things that are the most effective. Simply covering your leather furniture like couches or sofas with blankets is a great way to help keep them warm.
Using blankets is by far one of the most effective ways to keep your leather furniture warm.
Throw on some blankets over your leather furniture and this will help prevent that uncomfortable stinging cold when you take a seat.
Generally, the challenge with putting blankets on your sofa is whether or not the blanket is going to add up to the overall look and design or ruin it.
So all in all, you will realize there’s a learning curve to using the blankets.
The key thing you will have to keep in mind is to get blankets that follow the same color scheme so you do not have to sacrifice the look of your interior in your quest to have a warm sofa.
Here are a couple of high-quality blankets whose designs are universal and will be suitable for almost every kind of leather furniture.
Install A Heating Pad
If you have a little bit of money to spend and want a quick and easy route then using heating pads is the way to go.
This will be a great quick fix for your leather furnitures.
All it takes is plugging and switching on your heating pad and you”re all set.
There’s always one main concern when the issue of heating pads pops up in a conversation around leather.
And that is “I don’t want to damage my leather”. This is totally understandable since leather will generally not fare well with too much heat.
But there’s no need to worry! Modern heating pads are made to produce just about enough heat that will not but our skin nor damage or cause any harm to leather.
Conclusion
My aim for this article was to share with you a research I did into the reasons why leather is usually cold.
I hope that after reading this article, you have a little bit more understanding of why leather feels cold and have also gotten a few ideas on how to make them feel a bit cozier.
Thanks for sticking around and see you in the next one.
