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Pretty sure we discussed this with someone a year or so ago. You can’t un-dye leather.
Dyes used to tan leather are permanent or else they would just drip off in the rain or with sweaty feet. You must use a solvent if you want to try to lighten a shoe, because you’re trying to strip as much colour as possible.
Acetone, or Isopropyl alcohol, you can strip off the whole finish, then re-apply creams and oils into the leather, and polish again, but in reality this only works for a single shade. You can go dark brown to brown, but it may not be consistent.
Generally where you see fashion shoes with the sunburst or burnished toes, they started light and darker was applied.
If you apply light polish to a dark shoe, it’ll just look messy, or it won’t look any different. I once tried using white polish on a very pale cream-grey shoe as the difference in tone was small... it just looked awful and I had to clean all the polish off and start again.
pdlouche-
I actually have a pair of nice black boots where the dye is sort of a thin layer on top which slowly rubs off on the toes and heels. It looks real cool. But I've never seen it anywhere else.
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I'm certainly no expert but I am pretty sure many people around use different colors of creams to create depth and shades to shoes, with for example dark blue cream on black leather shoes, or even red/burgundy on brown shoes, which is why I was curious to see if anyone had advice or so around here.
The goal is to create nice tones, shades, and depth with color-ish reflects on the very dark brown, and as said not to change completely the color or try to re-color entirely the shoes, but I might have not explained so clearly
drøn
paulbiche
I don't think I will try acetone or any solvent causing potential damage to the shoe as I am not confident enough. I might have access to a bunch of different brown shades of creams, I will give a go anyway and see if it does provide a good result, I think it is safer and totally reversible (plus the shoes are a very very dark brown so can not be darkened much more anyway haha)
thanks for the replies!