How to clean leather boots

Clean them dry, and condition them afterwards. Those are the two rules that separate this from wiping a boot with a wet cloth. Dry mud brushes off; wet mud smears into the grain. And every cleaning method removes oils, so stopping at “clean” leaves the leather worse off than when you started.

1. 01

   Let them dry completely first

   Counter-intuitive, and it is the step that makes the rest easy. Dry mud brushes off in seconds; wet mud grinds into the grain and has to be washed out. Stand them somewhere ventilated overnight - never on a radiator, since Atsko states force drying with heat causes leather to harden and shrink.

2. 02

   Take the laces out and brush everything

   Laces out so you can reach the tongue and the eyelet row. Then a horsehair brush over the whole boot. A surprising proportion of the job is done here, with no product at all, and what is left is what actually needs cleaning.

3. 03

   Do the welt with a small brush

   The seam where the upper meets the sole collects grit and salt and almost nobody cleans it. An old toothbrush is the right tool. The stitching in that seam is the part of a good boot you cannot easily replace, so it is worth the extra minute.

4. 04

   Clean with saddle soap or a leather cleaner

   A damp cloth or brush, a little product, worked in small circles. Saddle soap for a deep clean on smooth leather; a water-based leather cleaner where there is old dressing build-up to lift. Membrane-lined boots want a cleaning gel made for waterproof footwear instead - Nikwax publishes the directions: rinse to dampen, apply and scrub with the brush applicator, rinse well, dry naturally.

5. 05

   Wipe the residue off with clean water

   Soap left on the surface to dry leaves a haze and keeps working on the leather. Wring a cloth out in clean water and go over the whole boot, changing to a fresh face as it loads up.

6. 06

   Dry slowly, then condition

   Overnight, ventilated, away from heat - Blundstone says never to dry boots by an artificial heat source. Once completely dry, condition. This is not an optional flourish: cleaning removed oils, and leaving them out is how the flex point cracks.

Things not to do

• The washing machine. It saturates padding you cannot dry again, strips oils aggressively, and can distort the shape.
• Dish detergent. Formulated to strip grease, which is exactly what leather does not need. Saddle soap is the leather-appropriate version of the same idea.
• Soaking them. You are cleaning a surface, not doing laundry. Damp cloth, many passes.
• Drying them fast. Every source we cite on this site agrees on this one. Heat hardens and shrinks leather.
• Putting them away before they are dry. A clean boot stored damp is the standard route to mold on the uppers, which is a longer job than the clean you just did.

How often

Brush them after every muddy wear - that is thirty seconds and it prevents most of the need for anything more. A full clean when they are actually dirty, or before you re-proof them, since a proofer applied over dirt seals the dirt in. Cleaning on a schedule for its own sake just removes oils you then have to replace.

Two boot types have their own published routines worth following instead of the general one. Cowboy boots get a four-step method and a specific warning about oil-based conditioners - cowboy boot care. And Dr. Martens publishes both a method and a list of its own materials that must never see a balsam - how to clean Dr. Martens.

Four more cases where the maker’s own guidance, or the contaminant, changes the method enough to be worth reading first: Timberland’s wheat nubuck is a napped surface where nothing on this page about saddle soap or conditioner applies; Blundstone publishes instructions by material and a three-month reproofing interval, and has an elastic gore no cream should touch; Red Wing publishes two different routines because it sells two different leathers; and work boots are usually carrying something chemically active - concrete, fuel, salt - where what is on the boot decides the first step rather than the boot itself.

If what you are actually looking at is a ring or tide line left behind after the boots got wet, that is not dirt and this method will not shift it - water stains want the opposite approach, which is wetting more of the boot rather than less.