What is perforated leather?
Perforated leather means synthetic leather or genuine leather with holes. Normally synthetic leather with holes is more popular. The holes are made by a professional punching machine. These holes can make the synthetic leather look nice and breathable and can increase the airflow. There are different types of holes, half-hole and the full hole are the most common ones. It is used for automotive seats the most in our lives.
Perforated leather VS regular leather
Compared with the regular leather, there are some strengths of perforated leather as below:
- Good ventilation: the perforated leather has better ventilation than regular leather, which is especially suitable to be used for car seats when people drive the car in the hot summer. It can let people’s skin to breathe and reduce the feeling of stuffiness.
- Good breathability: the perforated leather is made with special technology to make the leather more breathable and reducing the discomfort caused by setting for a long time, which is good for health.
- Good comfortability: the design of the perforated leather can better fit the curve od the human’s body, reduce the friction between the body and the seats, and improve the comfort of the seats.
How to do punching on regular leather?
When we make perforations on regular leather, we have to use a professional punching machine and punching paper( also called double grey paper in China). We can just send the finished goods to the professional factories that are very specialized in perforation, they will hand the rest. Some of our clients who are factories of car upholstery even own this kind of machine for themselves, cause perforated leather is very popular for car seats. They also ask us to help them purchase the punching paper sometimes. It’s a kind of super thick paper to put under and fix the regular leather when the machine is doing perforation.
See the following video about the punching for one of our hot-selling perforated leather recently.
What is perforated leather used for?
Perforated leather is used for automotive seats the most and the quality is big. Espectially in the areas where are in hot weather, such as the United Arab Emirates and Africa. It’s very common to make the cover of car seats. Some clients also use it for bedside to make the bed more breathable but the quantity is much less.
How do you keep perforated leather clean?
To clean perforated leather, you can follow these steps: first, use a dry towel to clean the dust and debris on the surface, and then use a vacuum cleaner with an adjustment function to clean, if there is oil or stains on the surface, you can use a special detergent to clean the surface. After cleaning, use a dry towel or vacuum cleaner again to remove the remaining moisture, and then use a degreasing leather care agent to care for the seat.
What factors will affect the durability of he perforated leather?
First, backing fabric plays an important role to make sure the perforated leather is strong or not. We exported a large quantity of perforated pvc leather to different clients these days. We found that not every kind of backing fabric of the PVC leather is suitable to do perforation. PVC leather has different types of backing fabrics, but not every kind of backing fabric suitable for perforation. We recommend the ones which are dense and with more cotton. If the backing fabric is too sparse, it will be easy to be broken when we do the tearing testing from the edges of one piece of PVC leather.
Plus, thickness is also important when making holes for PVC leather. Too thin PVC leather is not suitable to make perforations. It should be at least more than 0.8mm or even 1.3mm. From our experience, 1.2-1.3mm is good to make the regular leather strong after making holes.
Here below is the video about the comparison for two kinds of perforated leather we got container orders from clients for your reference. Then you will have a clear idea that thickness and backing fabric type will affect the tearing resistance of perforated leather.
What kind of perforated leather is suitable for automotive?
Well, when it comes to automotive perforated leather, matt surfaces and solid colors are more suitable. Shiny surface is more suitable for furniture leather or upholstery leather but isn’t suitable for car leather. When we get an order for car leather, we have to pay special attention to the surface brightness. Most of clients who do car upholstery request the surface of synthetic leather matte. And normally it should be solid color such as black, grey, red, burgundy, dark blue, brown, cream, and so on. Among all the colors, black and grey are the most ordered by our clients.
See below some of the popular items we exported these years.
