Shoe Polish and Leather Care Blog

Polishing grain leather is not an easy thing. Caring for the leather care be quite straight forward – keep it conditioned with Conditioner, protected with Cream, and add some scuff protection on the toes and heels with Paste/Wax Polish. But, getting that magic mirror shine or even a nice quality high shine, can sometimes be elusive.

Grain leather has more texture, it's grainy (by definition), and rubbing stiff waxes across grain can be challenging.

Read How...

Choosing which color of polish to buy for your valued pair of shoes can sometimes be tricky. Photos show a wide-range of leathers using a single polish color: For example, Walnut can be used to bring out the reddish tones in a lighter brown leather, or can be used to tone down the reds and accent the browns in a burgundy or mahogany colored leather.

To make it trickier, there is no one single uniform "color name" that we all use. From the leather industry, to the shoe industry, to the leather care industry, we all select a name that best represents our intended audience, and then hope they can figure it out by looking at the pictures. 

So as to not totally confuse you, we created this line-up of common shoe colors and leathers, to show you which color polishes we would select to best "color match" the leather.

For us, celebration and appreciation of Nature’s Beauty goes into everything we do. From the very small, to our worldwide efforts. On Earth Day today, we’d like to continue to recognize and celebrate Nature, the Earth, its beauty, and its strengths.

All of our products are made from all-natural, biodegradable ingredients. No animal fats, chemical dyes, or preservatives. Nothing but Pure Polish.

Read more about what goes into our polish. 

Live Beautifully. Shine Naturally. 

Below are some recent nature shots of Allen Edmonds Walnut Weybridge, polished to a mirror and given a warm glow. These are well-used shoes, not out of the box. They're just given proper care with our products.

White leather shoes are notoriously difficult to keep white. Fortunately, we make a White Cream Shoe Polish that allows you to keep your white leather vibrant and clean-looking.

Read our DIY How-To Blog on the question: "Do you ever use Pure Polish on wood furniture?" We used our All-Natural Leather Cleaner & Conditioner to clean the wood surface, Burgundy Cream to re-color the wood grain, and High Shine Wax to protect and finish the project. We feel it came out pretty good. Plus, it has the sweet smell of oranges, and was super fun to polish. 

Here's a walkthrough on our process for restoring a pair of Vintage Florsheim Imperial Wingtip Full-Brogue Oxfords.

They were given new life recently, using only our products for a full restore from start-to-finish.

Picked up from the bottom shelf of a thrift store for $4, we recognized that the leather still had a lot of life left in them, if given some love and chemistry attention.

Within driving distance of Pure Polish headquarters here in Bend, Oregon, we have the beautiful and fun High Desert Museum. They cover local herita...

We are lucky that each day our customers, friends, and fans tag us in social media posts, send us reviews, images, upload videos, and write blog posts about Pure Polish.

Here are a few of this week's community favorites.

There is a beautiful collection of high shines, mirror shines, and versatile "soft shines", using a collection of our products.

Before and After examples of some beautiful leather shoes, including Crockett & Jones Derbies, Navyboot Oxfords, Allen Edmonds Strands with a custom patina, and Vintage Florsheim Imperial Wingtips.

From High Shine to Mirror Shine, Before/After, Vintage Sears & Roebuck Catalog, Bespoke Shoes, restoring Allen Edmonds, and "The Ultimate Shine", we show our top Instagram posts from 2019, based on user engagement and likes.

Take a look...

This morning, before I stepped outside on this brisk and blustery Winter day here in Bend, I conditioned my Allen Edmonds Weybridge Walnut Calfskin Oxfords. Bend has a very dry desert climate, so it dries out leather super-quickly. This is why it's super important to keep it conditioned, so that it doesn't crack. 

The trick for getting the most from your Cleaner Conditioner is to apply it with your fingertips. Then you aren't leveraging the cleaning oils as much as the conditioning oils.

Today on Instagram, it appeared everyone was combining brown dress shoes with grey slacks. So, we had to follow-suit with this combination of Magnanni Colo derbies, Agave Denim Coco Mélange Grey slacks, and a Mirror Shine using our High Shine Paste/Wax and a touch of Light Brown Cream on the vamp.