Leatherette: What It Is and Why It Engraves Well

The question I get most often about leatherette is whether it is real leather. It is not, and I would rather say so plainly than let anyone find out later. What it is instead is a material that happens to be very well suited to a laser, and that is worth explaining properly, because how it engraves is the whole reason I use it.

What leatherette actually is

Leatherette goes by several names — faux leather, PU leather, vegan leather. Underneath the names it is a woven fabric base, usually polyester or a polyester-cotton blend, coated with a layer of polyurethane and embossed with a grain pattern. The coating is what you see and touch. The fabric underneath is what gives it strength.

That two-layer construction is not a compromise for my purposes. It is exactly what makes the material work under a laser, and it is why leatherette holds a mark that a solid material of the same colour could not.

What the laser actually does to it

A laser does not print onto leatherette and it does not cut a groove into it. It vaporises the polyurethane top coat in the places the design covers, exposing the layer underneath. The mark you end up with is not added colour — it is the material's own second layer, revealed.

That has a few consequences worth knowing about.

• It cannot fade, peel or wash off. There is no ink sitting on the surface and no film bonded to it. The design is a change in the material itself, so a coaster used every day for years looks the same as it did the week I made it.
• Contrast depends entirely on the colour you pick. This is the part most descriptions skip. Buckskin and rawhide brown engrave to a deep near-black, which is the sharpest contrast available and the reason so much engraved leatherette is brown. Black leatherette reveals a silver-grey that reads clean and metallic. Pale colours like eggshell and sand have a core much closer to their surface tone, so the engraving is quieter — legible, but soft rather than bold.
• Depth is a judgement call, not a setting you crank up. Remove too little of the coating and the mark is patchy. Remove too much and the laser reaches the woven backing, which shows up as a fuzzy, fibrous edge instead of a crisp one. Getting that right on each colour is most of the skill in the material.

So if you want a name or a logo to be visible across a room, ask me for buckskin or black. If you want something quieter — an engraving you notice when you pick the piece up — the lighter colours are the right choice, and I will tell you honestly which way a particular design will go before I cut it.

Living with it

Leatherette is far less demanding than leather. It resists water spots and stains, it does not need conditioning, and it will not dry out in a Phoenix summer. A damp cloth is the whole maintenance routine.

Where it differs honestly from leather: it does not develop a patina. Leather gets better looking as it ages and leatherette simply stays as it is until, eventually, it does not. Good-quality stock lasts for years without cracking. Cheap stock lifts at the seams within a year. I buy the former, which is part of why these pieces do not cost what a novelty item costs.

The vegan question, answered straight

Leatherette contains no animal product, so it is a genuine option for anyone who avoids leather. That is true and it matters to a lot of the people who buy from me.

The complete answer is that it is a plastic coating on a fabric backing, so it is not a natural material either. If your priority is avoiding animal products, leatherette does the job. If your priority is biodegradability, it does not. Both of those things are worth knowing before you choose.

What I make from it

The trifold wallet is the piece that gets carried daily, so the engraving quality shows most there. It comes in brown and gray, and brown gives the stronger contrast.

See the engraved leatherette trifold wallet

Coasters are the everyday test of whether a material really is water-resistant, and these pass it. Four colours: brown, eggshell, flint and sand.

See the engraved leatherette coasters

The keepsake box is the one people order for weddings, graduations and memorials, where the engraving is meant to be read years later rather than admired once.

See the faux leather keepsake box

Keychains are where the colour range really opens up — twelve options including carbon fibre finishes, which engrave differently again because the surface texture catches light.

See the engraved leatherette keychains

Two more pieces use the same material in smaller quantities: the slim can koozie and the bottle opener, where a leatherette wrap sits over a stainless body.

Browse all the engraved accessories

I engrave every one of these myself, and I am happy to talk through wording and colour before anything goes on the laser — particularly if you are choosing a pale colour and want to know what the contrast will actually look like.

If you came here from the garden side of the shop, most of what I make is engraved plant markers and garden tags.