Full-Grain Vs. Top-Grain Leather Furniture

Basics

• Not every leather hide is suitable for use to upholster furniture. It must be a large enough piece of hide to cover the furniture item. In addition, it cannot have many blemishes. Smaller leather pieces find uses for items that include such things as purses, shoes and belts. Leather suited for use as furniture upholstery is identified before the tanning and dying processes take place. The word grain describes the natural characteristics of the hide before processing. This includes the wrinkles, pores, texture and markings that are present in the hide.

Full Grain

• Full-grain leather has not had anything done to it to change the surface of the hide. Only the hair has been removed, but the original markings and texture of full-grain leather are intact. In other words, the natural grain of the leather is visible in its unaltered state. Because of that, only large pieces of higher-quality hides with very few blemishes are used as full-grain leather to upholster furniture. However, some furniture manufacturers call top-grain leather that has not had its grain changed, or corrected, full-grain leather.

Top Grain

• Top-grain leather is the top layer of the animal's skin. It is the outer portion of the hide. Top grains are fairly thin, usually only 3/64 inches thick, or about the thickness of the edge of a penny. This type of leather costs the most amount of money. During processing, if the natural grain of the leather is not attractive, it is corrected by buffing the leather. However, correcting top grain leather makes it less soft than uncorrected hides, and corrected hides are less expensive.

Comparison

• Full-grain leather is considered a premiere grade, which sounds good until you compare it to top-grain leather, which is the highest quality. Top-grain leather is the most expensive, but it is also the strongest type of leather. Strength is important in upholstery for furniture because it receives a lot of wear from use.

  Although people sometimes refer to top-grain leather with its original grain as being full-grain leather, that refers only to the grain. True full-grain leather is thicker than top-grain leather. Top-grain leather is actually created from a full-grain hide by using a long knife to slice the hide and separate the top from the lower layers of the leather as it passes through a series of rollers.