The best boot care products

Five items, and you are finished buying boot care products for a decade. The category is full of specialized products that solve narrow problems most people never have. This is the shelf that covers every job an ordinary leather boot actually needs.

The shelf

The order these go in

This is the part that gets done wrong, and doing it wrong wastes all five products:

1. Clean. Anything you apply over dirt drives the dirt in.
2. Dry completely, away from heat. Atsko states that force drying with heat causes leather to harden and shrink; Blundstone says never to use an artificial heat source.
3. Condition. Oils into clean, dry leather.
4. Proof. Last, because its entire job is stopping liquids getting into the leather - including the conditioner you would otherwise be applying next.
5. Cedar in for storage. Once the boots are dry, not before.

Notes on the picks

Bickmore Bick 1 takes the cleaner slot because it is intended to lift salt and old dressings without stripping the finish underneath, which suits frequent use. Lexol takes the conditioner slot on the strength of publishing an actual interval - every 6 months for ongoing care - which is more than anyone else in the category offers. Sno-Seal is the proofer for smooth leather; if your boots are suede, nubuck or membrane-lined, swap it for a water-based spray from the spray roundup instead.

If you only buy two things

A horsehair brush and a conditioner. Brushing removes most surface dirt without any product at all, and conditioning is the one job with permanent consequences if you skip it - once the fibers dry out and the flex point cracks, there is no product that closes that crack. Everything else on the shelf is optimization.