Leather vs Bonded Leather
If you are out there to buy leather furniture for home or office, you have got to be careful as there are many terms in vogue that are cleverly being used by unscrupulous salesmen to sell of something cheap and imitation in the garb of genuine leather. Leather is leather, and it needs no introduction, but there is a term called bonded leather that has become very popular these days. Though the term sounds very impressive, bonded leather is cheaper and not pure leather. There are differences between bonded leather and leather that will be highlighted in this article.
When you are in a furniture shop looking at leather sofas and other furniture items, you suddenly find a sofa set that looks just as attractive as a very expensive sofa set but is priced much lower than it. You are pleasantly surprised and become inclined to buy it even though the salesman describes it as having been made of bonded leather. Bonded leather, though the term sounds as if it is leather that has been strengthened through with a particular treatment, is reconstituted leather. It simply means that this is a leather that is made up of left over pieces of real leather that have been pressed and glued together and then laid out into thin layers to reconstitute a material that is partially synthetic in nature.
Genuine leather is all animal hide but the corners or the sides that become wasted while making leather items are reused by bonding these pieces. This bonded leather is cheaper than real leather, but it becomes hard to tell the difference as the smell of the bonded leather and genuine leather are identical, and the two also look the same.
Bonded Leather vs Genuine Leather
• Genuine leather is the entire animal hide whereas bonded leather is created with left over pieces of leather that are bonded together to create a leather like material.
• The look and feel of the two leathers is the same though real leather is harder to feel than bonded leather.
• Bonded leather can be a cheap alternative to real leather.
• Bonded leather is not as durable as real leather.
• Bonded leather is not pure leather; it contains synthetic material.