If you’re on the hunt for sectionals, sofas, loveseats, recliners, or upholstered seating for your living spaces, you may have come across the term “PU leather”. But what is PU leather, exactly? As a retailer with 3 furniture showrooms of our own, we frequently get questions from shoppers about all kinds of upholstery, including PU leather.
Questions like, “Is PU leather real leather?” “Is PU leather vegan?” “What is PU leather made of?” In addition to answering these questions, in the short article below, we’ll define what PU leather is, discuss some common applications for this upholstery material, and we’ll see how it stacks up against authentic leather and other leather alternatives like PVC leather and bonded leather. By the end, you’ll have all the info you need to know about this versatile upholstery material.
So, What Is PU Leather? And What Is It Used For?
PU leather, short for polyurethane leather, is a wholly synthetic upholstery material. In short, PU leather is designed to imitate the look and texture of real, authentic leather while offering consumers a few different benefits and characteristics. While it can’t measure up to the luxurious, buttery feel of high end full-grain or top-grain leather, PU leather is much more affordable than real leather, while also being far easier to clean and much more resistant to liquid spills.
In our industry, furniture manufacturers often use PU leather as an alternative to leather when upholstering sofas, loveseats, chairs, and even headboards. Furniture makers will often use PU leather when trying to keep costs down, or when making items like upholstered headboards where the expense of real leather is harder to justify. Because PU leather is durable and low maintenance, it’s often used for items that are expected to endure regular, heavy use, such as commercial and office furniture, desk chairs, lift chairs, and automobile interiors.
Perhaps most commonly, PU leather is frequently used as a leather match upholstery material. This is where a piece of furniture such as a leather sofa is upholstered with higher-grade leather in all the places where a user will touch the furniture, while non-contact areas like the sides and back are upholstered with lower-grade leather or imitation leather made to match. This is done to lower the cost of authentic leather furniture and make it more affordable and accessible.
Is PU Leather Vegan? Is PU Leather Real Leather? What Is PU Leather Made Of?
Let’s answer a few other frequently-asked questions about polyurethane leather, starting with the most obvious. If you’ve read this far, you already know that PU leather isn’t made from cowhide or other animal hides like real leather.
Rather, PU leather is made with a backing fabric (often cotton or polyester) which is then coated with polyurethane. Finally, this surface is embossed to create a finished product with a texture similar to authentic leather. Since PU leather is fully synthetic and isn’t manufactured using any animal products, it is considered to be a vegan material. In fact, polyurethane leather is frequently known as “vegan leather”.
This leads to another common question – “Is PU leather the same thing as faux leather?” Well, kinda. PU leather is a type of faux leather, but not all faux leather is PU leather. The term “faux leather” is often used to describe another leather alternative known as PVC leather or vinyl leather.
How Does PU Leather Compare to Other Leather Alternatives?
We already briefly discussed how PU leather compares to real leather. But how does it measure up against other common leather upholstery alternatives like PVC leather and bonded leather?
First, let’s talk PVC leather (also known as vinyl leather). For better or worse, this material is what most consumers think of when they imagine faux leather. While being very affordable, PVC leather is both stiffer and less breathable than PU leather. It also lacks the comfortable, smooth feel of PU leather, is easier to tell apart from real leather, and it has a tendency to crack over time. For these reasons, we believe PU leather to be the superior leather alternative.
How about bonded leather? Technically bonded leather is a mixture of leather scraps and polyurethane. While it might sound like a great compromise between real and synthetic, bonded leather is far less durable than PU leather. As we discuss at length in our article on why bonded leather has fallen out of favor in the furniture industry, bonded leather has a reputation for poor quality due to potentially severe peeling issues. In fact, in many ways, PU leather is the industry’s answer to the poor performance of bonded leather.
Bonded leather has nothing on the durability, feel and look offered by polyurethane leather. And while PVC leather has many viable uses, here in the furniture industry, PU leather is superior to PVC leather in almost every way. Short of actual leather upholstery, it is our opinion that polyurethane leather is the next best thing.
Have More Questions About PU Leather? Ask Us!
In a nutshell, PU leather is a synthetic upholstery material that offers at least some of the charm of real leather at a much lower price. Its versatility, affordability, and ease of maintenance make it a popular choice among furniture manufacturers and shoppers alike.
If you live in metro Atlanta and still have questions about polyurethane leather and whether it may be right for your home, come see us at our 3 North Georgia furniture stores! At our Woodstock/Acworth furniture showroom, we have over 100,000 square feet of furniture for the whole home. This includes a wide variety of upholstered seating from dozens of manufacturers! It also includes an assorted selection of upholstery spanning everything from linen, polyester and acrylic, to top-grain leather, corrected leather and PU leather. See you soon!
