Permanent Ink/ Sharpie / Magic Marker on leather

One of the most devastating things that can occur to your leather furniture is permanent ink getting on it. Most this time, this is done by a small child who decided to draw on the leather upholstery when left unsupervised. I know that over the years I have personally sent three relatively new sofas back to Hancock and Moore to get re-leathered when this occured, and that was costly. You cannot get permanent ink out of leather with chemicals (some attempt to do so). This fails because the chemicals needed to remove the ink are so strong it damages the leather in the area, the result being a bigger and more unsightly mess than that ink itself. Re-leathering is expensive, probably not worth it on an older sofa. You can also repaint the surface on finished leathers, but again this is not inexpensive.

However, here's something you can try that costs virtually nothing except a piece of steel wool and some elbow grease.

Take a # 0000 Super Fine piece of steel wool (do not use coarser grades) and start working the area if a finished leather. The finished (or Protected) leather is painted, and steel wool can be used with reasonable success on painted surfaces. Work the area with the Steel Wool, back and forth. Be careful and watchful to not remove the color coat of the leather. If you see the color coat coming off the leather or too much of the sheen coming off then stop - you're done. You will not get 100% of the mark out, but you can dull it down to about half of that with the steel wool. When you are satisfied with your work, apply some leather conditioner to the area.

Here's a swatch I did for a customer to demonstrate this last week. The area below the two pens shows the area worked. About 50% removal using the steel wool. Yes, you can still see the Sharpie marks, however they are dulled considerably.

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