Leather Sofa Upholstry Care

Factual Questions
1

OK, here’s the deal; I’m thinking about buying a new sofa. If you care, It’s this one right here:

http://www.woodstockoutlet.com/gallery/Fgallery3-4.jpg

My two General Questions™ are this: (with my apologies if this would be better served in IMHO)

  1. They want to sell me a stain guard (5 year guarantee?) to the tune of $100 for the sofa, $80 for the chair, and $50 for the ottoman. What’s the straight dope on this? Should I do it? Or is this like buying undercoating for a car. Just something to make the dealer more money.

  2. The salesman was talking about every few months I should wipe the sofa down with xxx productZ xxx. Who actually does this? I mean do I just need to add this to a schedule to do with my matress turning, etc? (Like I actually ever do that)

Thanks for the straight dope.

E3

2

Read the literature for the furniture. Some leather products specifically tell you NOT to put anything whatsoever on the upholstery (my couch is like this). I wouldn’t purchase the stain guard. Sounds like the auto scam you described. You can get the same effect by buying a bottle of leather treatment for $20, if needed.

3

We have leather furniture and in seven years of use (over five with a small child in the house), we have had no stains. Unless the type of leather you are buying has some risk of stains, I’d skip the stain guard.

I don’t know about the leather conditioner. I just noticed we have flaking on one corner of one cushion, and I’m wondering if we could have prevented it. We have done nothing to the couches except wipe off spills when they happened.