How to clean Blundstone boots

Brush the dirt off dry, wipe with a damp cloth, let them air dry away from any heat, then put the Renovating Cream shade that matches your leather on them - and reproof every three months, which is the one interval Blundstone actually publishes. If your Blundstones are suede, nubuck or the onMicro microfibre, stop before the cream: Blundstone states plainly that the creams are not for those materials.

Blundstone publishes more care detail than most boot makers, and all of it is about the leather. The gap - and it is the question people actually have - is the elastic. We will get to that, labeled as our reading rather than as a published instruction, because Blundstone does not address it anywhere we can find.

What Blundstone publishes, by material

The routine, in order

1. 01

   Pull the insoles out before anything else

   Blundstone publishes that its insoles are removable and should be hand washed, rinsed and dried flat with no artificial heat. Taking them out also opens the boot up so the inside dries, which is the single best thing you can do about the smell a pull-on boot develops. A Chelsea boot has no laces to open, so the footbed is the only way in.

2. 02

   Brush the dry dirt off, soft brush first

   Blundstone’s leather instruction is a soft brush or a damp cloth for caked dirt, then air dry. Same principle as every napped and smooth leather on this site: dry soil brushes away, wet soil gets pushed in. The welt and the seam where the upper meets the sole hold the most of it.

3. 03

   Clean the leather, in circular motions, then wipe the residue off

   Blundstone names a leather cleaner and publishes the method - rub it in with a cloth or brush in circular motions, then wipe the residue off and dry. Bickmore publishes Bick 1 for exactly this job and says to follow it with a conditioner. Do not skip the residue wipe; dried cleaner is what leaves a film on the toe.

4. 04

   Soles separately, and keep the water off the upper

   Stiff nylon brush, and for tread that will not give up, Blundstone publishes soaking the soles in a shallow bath of warm water for two hours - with the water line kept below the leather. That is a usefully specific instruction and the kind of thing most makers will not put in writing.

5. 05

   Air dry at room temperature, and mean it

   Blundstone’s heat warning is unusually blunt: artificial heat can make the leather “harden, shrink and crack” and can pull it away from the sole. On a Chelsea boot that second failure matters more than it sounds, because the upper is bonded to the sole without a lacing system to hold the shape while it dries. The fast-but-safe drying options are here.

6. 06

   Cream, in the right shade - or skip it entirely

   Match the shade to the leather: Black, Brown and Cherry are pigmented for their styles, Rustic is non-pigmented and cleared for any leather in the range. Blundstone says to test on a small area first, and warns that Rustic “darkens rustic leathers initially” before they “lighten again over time”. If the boots are suede, nubuck or onMicro, do not use any of them.

7. 07

   Reproof, and put it on a three-month clock

   This is the one number Blundstone publishes: a waterproof spray or wax every 3 months, more often in a wetter climate, because the leather “does not offer full waterproof protection” on its own. Blundstone’s own 125 ml spray is “designed for use on any leather product in our range”; Nikwax publishes Fabric & Leather Proof for the same job on mixed uppers.

The elastic side panels, and why nobody publishes about them

Blundstone’s care page, its FAQ and its boot-care guidance all cover leather, suede, nubuck, onMicro, canvas and soles. None of them mentions the elastic gore. We checked, and we are not going to invent an instruction to fill the gap.

What we can say, flagged clearly as reasoning from what Blundstone does publish rather than as a published instruction: the elastic is a textile, and the things Blundstone warns against for leather are worse for it, not better. Solvents, strong acids and alkalis are named as damaging. Salt is named as highly damaging. Heat is named as damaging. Elastic is the component on the boot that fails from heat and from repeated salt crystallisation, and it is the component you cannot replace without a cobbler. So: keep cream and proofer off the gore where you reasonably can, rinse salt off it promptly rather than letting it dry in, and never dry the boots anywhere warm. That is advice built from Blundstone’s own warnings, applied to a part it does not discuss - not a claim it endorses.

The practical version: when you cream the boot, work the cloth up to the edge of the elastic and stop. A proofing spray is harder to keep off, and a spray cleared for mixed leather-and-fabric uppers is the sensible choice for that reason.

Salt, which Blundstone singles out

“Milk and salt are also highly damaging”, with the instruction to clean the boots immediately if exposed. That is a stronger statement than most makers make, and it is the reason a pull-on winter boot wants attention the same evening rather than at the weekend - the salt method is here, and preventing it is cheaper than removing it. A white crust on a Blundstone also sits right at the gore line, which is the worst place on the boot for it to be.

What a Chelsea boot changes about everything else

Three things, and they all come from the same fact - there are no laces.

• You cannot make room. Anything you put inside takes volume you cannot give back by loosening an eyelet. That is the same constraint we wrote up for insoles in a pull-on boot, and it applies here: the stock Blundstone footbed is thin, and a thick replacement will lift your heel out of its pocket.
• The boot dries slower. No lacing means no opening up. Pull the footbed, pull the boot’s shaft open as far as it goes, and give it air - or use a dryer that puts air inside rather than heat around the outside.
• The pull tabs take the strain. They are stitched to the upper and they are what you yank on twice a day. Conditioning the leather around them is not vanity; dry leather at a stress point is where a tab tears out.

If the leather has gone dull rather than dirty

Dull is usually dry, and dry is what a conditioner fixes. Blundstone’s Renovating Cream is the maker-matched answer, and it is the only product any maker describes as formulated for Blundstone’s own leathers. If you would rather use something with a published ingredient position, our conditioner ranking has four that publish more than Blundstone does - and if they are past dull and into stiff or cracking, that is a different job with a different product.

One honest caveat on the cream: Blundstone publishes no ingredient list, no size on its own product page and no application steps beyond “test first”. It is recommended here because the maker says it is formulated for these leathers and is explicit about which of its own materials it must not touch - which is more than most own-brand creams manage - not because its composition is documented.

Storage, between seasons

“A dry, airy space”, away from heat and damp and out of sunlight. Clean and condition before they go away, not when they come back out, because salt and soil left on leather keep working the whole time the boots sit in the cupboard. Something to hold the shaft shape helps on a Chelsea boot, since there is no lacing to keep the throat open.

The canvas and onMicro Blundstones, which are not leather at all

Blundstone makes three materials this page has barely mentioned, and it publishes separate handling for each. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive mistake available on these boots, because the Renovating Cream exclusion is absolute.

• Canvas. Blundstone’s method is to scrub the dirt with a soft brush - it suggests an old toothbrush - then clean the whole boot with a cloth or brush dipped in warm water, and stuff tissue paper inside while it air dries to help it hold its shape. The hard rule is the dryer: never put canvas Blundstones in a tumble dryer, as they “risk shrivelling and damaging the sole”. That is the only machine warning Blundstone publishes anywhere.
• Suede and nubuck. Covered in the table above, and the detail to take seriously is the nubuck timing: brush gently in a circular motion, “taking care not to spend more than a few seconds on any area”. Nubuck burnishes flat under pressure and does not come back. The tools for that are a different shelf from the cream.
• onMicro waterproof microfibre. Blundstone’s vegan material, and explicitly excluded from the Renovating Cream along with suede and nubuck. Blundstone does not publish a care routine for it beyond that exclusion, so we are not going to supply one.

The practical takeaway is to find out which material your boots actually are before you buy anything, because three of Blundstone’s four material families cannot take the product most people reach for first.