Cleaning and caring for sneakers: by material, not by home remedy

Identify the material first, then choose the method

Before you reach for a brush or soap, check what the shoe is made of. Every product page in our catalogue lists the upper material: suede/velour leather for the Puma Suede Classic, leather for the Nike Air Force 1 '07, textile/canvas for the Converse Chuck 70. This detail decides everything that follows.

Four groups cover almost the entire market:

• Velour leather, often called suede. A rough surface with raised fibres. Sensitive to water and grease, but surprisingly good to dry clean.
• Smooth leather. A closed, smooth surface. Tolerates spot moisture, but needs to be conditioned with grease again afterwards.
• Canvas and textile. Absorbent and easy to wash, but prone to water marks and discolouration.
• Mesh, knit and synthetics. Technical fabrics on running shoes and modern silhouettes. Insensitive to water, sensitive to heat and hard brushes.

Everyday reality is rarely made of a single material, though. The adidas Samba OG combines leather with suede overlays, the Nike Air Max 90 is a leather/mesh mix. With shoes like these, one rule applies: the most delicate material on the shoe always counts. If you treat the Samba like a pure leather shoe, you ruin the overlays.

What you really need

The basic kit is short and costs less in total than a branded set:

• A soft brush for textile and leather, plus a crepe brush or suede eraser for velour leather.
• Two to three microfibre cloths, one of them used only for wiping over with clean water.
• A mild, pH-neutral cleaner. A drop of delicate-fabric detergent or mild soap in lukewarm water is enough for almost everything.
• An old toothbrush for seams, eyelets and the edge of the sole.
• Kitchen paper or shoe trees for stuffing the shoes while they dry.
• A waterproofing spray that suits the material.

What you do not need: washing-up liquid with degreasers, scouring agents, bleach and solvents. They remove dirt reliably and colour along with it. Aggressive cleaning pads also do not belong on coloured uppers, only at most on the rubber edge.

Four steps that are the same for every material

• Take out the laces and insoles. Both collect most of the odour and are much easier to clean separately.
• Let it dry first, then brush it off. Wet dirt gets worked into the material when you rub, while dried dirt falls off.
• Little moisture, evenly spread. A shoe never needs to be soaked through. Working on one spot only is also the surest way to get a visible water ring.
• Air dry, never with heat. The most important point on the whole list, more on this below.

Suede: dry first, water last

Suede has a reputation for being impossible to care for. That is not true, it just demands the reverse order: with suede, dry cleaning comes first and water only if it cannot be avoided.

Let the shoe dry completely and then brush the dirt out in one direction with a crepe brush. What is still stuck can often be removed with a suede eraser, using light pressure and short strokes. Only after that does a special suede cleaner come into play, if needed, applied sparingly and over the whole area of a section, not just on the stain. If the nap is flat after drying, careful brushing raises it again; brief steam over a pot also helps.

Among others, these models from the lifestyle section are affected:

• adidas Gazelle and adidas Campus 00s: entirely suede, so the classic dry case.
• Puma Speedcat: suede and textile mix, and also a very narrow cut, which is why water stains on the sides are especially noticeable.
• Vans Old Skool: suede and textile mix. The canvas part tolerates soapy water, the suede parts do not.
• New Balance 327: suede and textile mix with large suede areas at the heel and toe.

Two things are off limits for suede: the washing machine and leather grease. Both mat the nap, and the matt surface does not come back afterwards.

Smooth leather: little water, then care

Smooth leather is the most grateful material, as long as you stick to two rules. First: only damp, never wet. Second: after cleaning, the leather lacks oils, and these need to go back in.

In practice that means: wipe off dust dry, then go over the surface with a well wrung-out cloth and a drop of mild soap. Use the toothbrush on seams and eyelets, then wipe over with clean water and let the shoe dry. Finally, apply a thin layer of leather care or colourless shoe cream, let it soak in and buff it. With perforated areas, such as the ventilation holes on the Air Force 1, work carefully, because moisture runs straight into the lining there.

• adidas Stan Smith and Reebok Club C 85: smooth leather, white, with clean edges. Here, regular wiping over pays off more than one big clean every few months.
• New Balance 550: leather with many overlays and seams where dirt collects.
• Veja Campo: ChromeFree leather, meaning chrome-free tanned. In our experience it reacts more sensitively to aggressive products, so mild cleaning here is not a recommendation but a must.

White leather classics are, by the way, so popular for exactly this reason: they quickly look bad, but they are also the quickest to be restored. Which models these are in detail is covered in Beste weiße Sneaker.

Canvas and textile: the simplest case, with a catch

Canvas tolerates water and soap without problems. The catch lies elsewhere: the fabric absorbs, and exactly where the damp zone ends, a visible edge forms as it dries. The solution is unspectacular: never work only on the stain, but always treat the whole area up to the next seam.

The Vans Authentic, the Vans Classic Slip-On and the Converse Chuck 70 are textile/canvas and can be cleaned with lukewarm soapy water and a soft brush. Afterwards wipe over with clean water, otherwise soap residue remains, which attracts new dirt.

A second point concerns white canvas: it yellows if it dries in strong sun. Drying in the shade and at room temperature is therefore not a minor detail, but the difference between white and beige.

Mixed materials: the rule of the most sensitive part

Most sneakers are mixed constructions, and that is where the most expensive mistakes happen. With the adidas Samba OG with leather and suede overlays, the Air Max 90 as a leather/mesh mix or the New Balance 2002R with its mesh/suede mix, this means: the suede parts are treated dry, leather and mesh damp, and one after the other, not in one go with the same cloth.

This takes longer than an all-round wash and is exactly why so many mixed-material shoes look blotchy after the first clean. Anyone who knows the silhouettes and their materials beforehand can avoid that; an overview is provided by Beste Sneaker-Klassiker.

Running shoes: mesh, knit and the foam underneath

Technical uppers such as the engineered mesh on the Nike Pegasus 41 are largely insensitive to water. The real risk sits underneath: midsoles made of foamed plastic and the adhesive bonds to the outsole do not like heat.

For running shoes from the running section, this means: knock out sand and dust, work with lukewarm water and a soft brush, treat insoles and laces separately, and dry the shoes in an airy place at room temperature. No heater, no sun, no dryer.

Important for perspective: cleaning makes the shoe clean, not new. The foam loses resilience over the kilometres regardless. When a replacement is really due is covered in Laufschuhe wechseln: wann?.

Trail shoes: mud needs to come off immediately

With trail shoes, cleaning is not a cosmetic matter but about preserving function. Dried mud between the lugs costs grip, and sand in the lacing system and gaiter attachment wears through the straps.

Models with a deep tread such as the Salomon Speedcross 6 with very deep Contagrip lugs or the Hoka Speedgoat 6 benefit from being roughly rinsed with lukewarm water straight after the run, without high pressure, which forces water and dirt into the seams. Then brush out the gaps between the lugs. Which treads suit which terrain is explained in Trailschuhe: Matsch oder Fels?, and more models can be found in the trail section.

Sole edge and yellowed white

The rubber edge is the one area where you can be more forceful. A melamine sponge or an ordinary eraser removes scuff marks without touching the upper, provided you really stay on the rubber.

With yellowed white soles, we want to be honest: this is usually not dirt but oxidation of the material from light and oxygen. It sits in the rubber and not on it, which is why cleaning cannot reliably remove it. We do not blanket-recommend the treatments with hydrogen peroxide and sunlight that circulate online: they can attack adhesives, prints and adjacent textile, and whether they work depends on the specific sole material. Only prevention is effective: store them dark, dry and out of strong sun.

Washing machine: the honest answer

The care instructions of the big brands practically all come down to hand cleaning, and there are good reasons for that: the mechanics of the drum, the temperature, detergent residue in the foam and the strain on the adhesive bonds.

If you do it anyway, then only under these conditions: pure canvas or textile without leather and suede parts, laces and insoles removed, shoes in a laundry bag, cold cycle or 30 degrees at most, delicate-fabric detergent, no spinning, no dryer. Models such as the Vans Authentic are more likely to survive this than a mixed-material shoe.

Clearly not suitable for the machine: anything with suede, anything made of smooth leather, shoes with visible air units or glued-on elements, and generally expensive models where you do not want to take the risk. We deliberately give no success rate here, as we have not checked this under controlled conditions, and anything else would be guesswork.

Drying: this is where most shoes get ruined

The most common write-off does not happen during cleaning, but in the hour afterwards. Heaters, dryers and direct sun warp uppers, make leather hard and brittle and loosen bonds.

• Stuff with kitchen paper, which absorbs moisture and keeps the shape. With light-coloured shoes, no printed newspaper, as the ink can transfer.
• Room temperature and airflow, no heat source. Twelve to twenty-four hours is normal.
• Dry insoles and laces separately, otherwise residual moisture stays in the shoe.
• Change the paper once when it has soaked through.

Prevention takes less time than cleaning

The most effective care step happens before the shoe gets dirty. Waterproof new sneakers before the first wear and then every few weeks, with a product that suits the material. For suede there are dedicated sprays. The protection does not prevent dirt, but it buys you the time to wipe it off before it soaks in.

Add to that three unspectacular habits: rotate several pairs so the inner lining dries in between; don't store shoes in the car or on a radiator; and wash laces separately on a regular basis, because they shape the overall impression more than the rest. If you want to filter by material for your next purchase, the shoe finder helps, and for a direct side-by-side of two models there is the comparison.

Where care reaches its limit

Finally, the points where cleaning no longer helps:

• Worn-through outsole tread. Clean but without grip is no improvement.
• Collapsed midsole. Mainly affects running shoes and can't be judged from the outside.
• Torn upper at flex creases. Repairs rarely last long there.
• Sole bonding coming loose. From here on, the shoe is a case for the cobbler or for replacement.
• Odour that returns after cleaning the insole and lining. It usually sits in the foam and won't come out any more.