Why You Should Never Buy Blended Leather Furniture (Part 1)

Hello, hello! How are you all? Goodness, it's been ages since I last posted. Oh how I miss blogging.  Let's talk about some of the drama that has occurred in my life while I've been silent over here on the blog.

For example, the drama of blended leather, the "cost efficient" substitute for real leather. You should stay far, far, far away. As far away as possible from it. It's the worst investment, or lack thereof, you could make for your home. A lot of people see it as a great replacement for the much more expensive leather, but after I share my experience, you'll understand why leather is much better.

 Better yet, how about I let my pictures talk instead...

We bought this couch when we bought our home in California. It held up for a good two years. Since it was in good shape, we decided to bring it with us on our move to Dubai. Another year went by and it immediately started to crackle. As soon as the pleather (blended leather) started to crackle, the disintegration process happened so fast. The seat cushions disintegrated so fast I had to flip them upside down to prevent debris from falling all over the floor. I think what also didn't help the situation was that when we traveled in the summer months back to the USA, the heat was so hot in our house that the couch became brittle faster.

So for a few months our couch looked like this...

I debated dumping it, reupholstering it, using real leather vs. fabric, dark colors vs. light colors etc, etc. I  looked around Dubai and found that a similar couch to this ran around AED 4000 (almost $1090.00) We bought our couch for $700. Reupholstering it would cost me AED 1,500 including fabric. A couch half this size from Ikea was still AED 2,500+. 

If you're lost I'll simplify it for you. The cheapest route was to reupholster it. That way we could still have a large brand new couch without having to pay three times the price we originally paid for this one. Then it was a matter of using real leather or fabric. I checked out a lot of beautiful real leather around the Bur Dubai areas and Nayef Souq, but the reality is leather is expensive and we just couldn't afford it at that time. Had I known this would happen to my couch I would have saved up to pay for the leather. 

You either save up money for it and buy the real thing or you buy a couch with washable, resilient, removable covers. I decided to reupholster it in a resilient washable fabric. 

While blended leather is affordable and nice looking at first, it is a nightmare once it starts falling apart and you have to pay more to either reupholster it or replace the entire couch. My in-laws have real leather couches that have lasted more than 11 years and still look great! My couch lasted 4 years before I had to reupholster it. 

So, my advice to you all is go leather or go home. Don't waste your money on the fake stuff unless you have little kids who puke, pee, and poo all over it all the time and wiping it up happens more than 20 times a day in which case you would have to replace what every you owned anyway, unless it was real leather :-) 

I'll have the after post up soon so hang in there. Thanks for stopping by! 

-Debora