As you can see in the title we are shortly going to discuss how you can select the best matching colour shoe polish for your shoes. We specifically use the term best matching since a shoe polish will almost never exactly match the colour of your shoes. Even though your shoes are made and branded the colour ‘Cognac’ there are still many interpretations of what the colour needs to look like. This guide will mostly refer to Saphir Médaille d’Or Pommadier shoe creams, but also apply to Saphir Pate de Luxe shoe wax and Distinctly Different Crème deluxe shoe cream since they all use the same colour numbering and naming.
Neutral or coloured shoe polish?
The safest choice is to go for a neutral shoe cream and wax. This way you do not need to concern yourself with matching your shoe polish to your shoes. Also, using a neutral cream will prevent that your shoes are slowly coloured towards the shade of the shoe. Do mind that this is a very slow process and you would have to treat your shoes with a coloured shoe cream many times with the same colour shoe polish before you will actually notice any change in colour. On average we would say about 10% of the pigment that is in a shoe polish actually sticks to the leather. For black shoes you should exclusively use black coloured shoe polishes.
Getting rid of scratches
That said, to camouflage scratches or any deep cuts into the leather we do recommend using a coloured cream and wax. Also, using a neutral or colourless polish for a long period of time can cause the colour of your shoes to fade a bit so alternating between a neutral and a coloured shoe polish is best recommended. If you are doubting between two shades of for example brown we recommend picking the one that is slightly darker than the colour of your shoes. A Pommadier cream that is slightly darker than your shoes does a better job at masking scratches and bringing up faded colour.
Colour swatch
We created a simple colour swatch chart with the different colours Saphir Mèdaille d’Or Pommadier cream applied to regular white piece of paper. This way you get a better idea of what the colours look like when applied to your shoes. Please note the difference between the swatches and the digital colours.
Conclusion
It is almost impossible to mess up a pair of shoes because of a badly matching colour shoe polish. If a shoe polish does not give you the result you had in mind you can always remove it using Saphir Renomat. For black shoes you simply use black shoe polishes. And if you really are not sure which colour to choose or you do not want to buy a colour of shoe cream for every pair of shoes you can always go for a neutral, colourless shoe polish. We also have Saphir Pommadier colour samples available for sale on our website which you can combine with a handy colour chart.
