Lessons in Treating Notebook Cover Leather

It's cheap, easy, and will add life to your leather

Last month, I decided to treat the leather on one of my prized notebook covers. I’ve only done a treatment once before, and it was on a cover by another manufacturer.

This process was easy, cheap, and will add life and vitality to your leather covers. I highly recommend that everyone do this.

The first lesson learned is what kind of leather balm to buy. Most of these cost <$25 and will give you 50-200 restoration treatments. What you need to know upfront is:

1. not all leather is the same

2. not all leather balms are the same

3. in most cases, your leather will change in appearance as a result of the treatment

For this reason, I’m highly skeptical about trying just any balm/treatment on any leather cover. I’m careful to purchase the one recommended by the cover manufacturer.

For this exercise, I treated a special Traveler’s Company Starbucks Reserve Roastery cover I had bought a few years ago. Since it’s on dark brown leather, it was starting to get pretty scratched up and dry.

The Renapur leather balsam on Traveler’s Company website is what’s recommended for their notebook cover leather. At a price of only $10 and after seeing the effect, I highly recommend it. It says it’s good for up to 300 shoe polishes. My guess is you’ll get 100+ notebook cover restorations out of this nice-sized jar.

It comes with the application sponge above, and it smells like a strongly scented beeswax. You only need to use a small amount. I wasn’t sure how much to use, and the amount below (a dime-sized amount) was just enough to cover the entire cover.

The second lesson I learned was how to apply the treatment. It was easier than I thought.

First, remove all items from your cover to avoid getting balm on them. Position any traveler’s notebook strings to the side (and you’ll have to work around them).

Then open and lay your cover completely flat on a surface that you don’t mind tarnishing with a little bit of balm. Most balms are beeswax-based, so you can wipe this off later from most shiny surfaces with no impact.

You will only treat the outside for most leather notebook covers.

Place a dime-sized amount of balm directly onto one corner of the sponge. Then start on one side of the cover and spread it out slowly in circles. Only use the one corner of the sponge (I’ll explain why later).

You’ll see quickly that a little goes a long way. Your cover will start to moisturize and darken immediately.

Keep working in circles until you treat the entire cover. Don’t add any more balm until you’ve used the full amount on your sponge, as this is the kind of stuff you don’t want to overuse.

Once you’re done, go back with the dry side of the sponge and wipe off any excess balm. Then check your balm’s instructions to see if your treated cover needs to sit for a while before using it again. The Renapur balm does not require any drying time.

Finally, replace all the items in your cover and enjoy!

The final lesson I learned is the impact of the treatment on the notebook cover and sponge. Here is the before picture:

And here is the after picture. It is definitely darker now and has more even tones:

And here is the cover 1-month after treatment:

It still feels very moisturized and has maintained the darker color from the treatment. However, for those of you who like a rough and tumble approach to your covers, note that it still scratches up, as is the usual behavior of this leather. It just looks less worn in response.

Note that there is no lingering smell from the balm on the cover.

I recommend only using one corner of the sponge because, if your leather is treated with a dye/color, some of it will rub off onto your sponge. And if you’re like me and have notebook covers in various colors, you’ll want to avoid using the same part of the sponge on other notebook cover colors to avoid contamination.

In summary, I’d recommend performing this treatment at least once or twice a year to ensure your leather is conditioned. But it really depends on how much you use your notebook and how roughly you treat it.

After seeing the positive results of this treatment, I now plan on treating all of my Traveler’s Company leather notebook covers! 🙂

Happy planning!