IMO any type of goofy coating onleather is a bad idea leather wears well over along time with very little upkeep other than wipe down with a damp cloth and a good quality leather balm once a year .. I like cowhide as opposed to super soft leather and honestly I have had leather for more than 40 yrs and have never needed to replace the leather in a sofa only the stuffing in the seat cushions when our son took our 40 yr old set for his family room . Cats do number on leather we had cats but they have really good scrtacing post and if the had a certain spot they liked to lay i just put a blanket there . Leather needs to breathe

Thank you for your comments, Patricia. The sofa came to me with badly stained leather and deteriorated cushions. I bought it for the Stickley style frame, which is in excellent condition and fits nicely in my home. Fortunately, the cats are not interested in clawing any of my leather pieces. They shred cloth upholstery despite having a variety of approved scratching surfaces.

You can buy a $15 spray bottle of Crypton leather treatment to try out on your current sofa. See if you like what it does to the old leather.

https://crypton.com/cleaning-products/leather-vinyl-protector/

We also fund cats are not really into trying to get hteir claws into leather but please do not seal up the leathers ability to breathe since that is the point of good leather . Sealing it is why people say it is sticky to sit on

Trying the spray treatment on an old piece is an interesting and inexpensive idea, apple-pie. Thank you for providing a link to the product.

"Sticky feeling" is helpful feedback, Patricia. Do you have additional suggestions regarding selecting leather for the sofa cushions?

"Crypton" coated leather is terrible. It is hard, crinkly and has no "hand" to it, and is also a dead look It was a product developed to try to be all things to all people, and may manufacturers added it to their lines four to five years ago. It didn't sell and was largely dropped by most alll of them.

Top Grain leather doesn't need a treatment. The truth is if you regularly clean and condition your hides they will last 40 years or even longer. Most people fail to do the maintenance on them.

In my expreience, you cannot successfully replace leather on portions of a sofa, it never looks right. If you are going to go through the trubole of upholsterying it, do the entire piece, in either leather or just do fabric if you think you may want to replace the piece in a few years.

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts about my project. It seems that the Crypton representative and other commenters may be describing materials with different finishing processes and outcomes. The leather sample I saw did not appear to have a surface coating or unnatural feel, however it was a very small swatch and I left wishing I could handle a larger piece.

Yes, we read the comments and thought there might be some confusion between our product and other brands. Glad we could help clarify. Have you tried ordering a swatch directly from Cortina or through Material Bank? We are unsure of the swatch size each provides, but it might be worth a try. Cortina Leathers on Material Bank