Published : 2023-08-05

Whiten your shoes

To whiten your shoes or sneakers easily, we share here some of our best tips with you. So that you can give a second life to your shoes, to wear them or resell them.

How to whiten shoes ?

In just a few steps it is possible to whiten dirty or worn sneakers, which will save you from having to buy a new pair. Whether cleaning, or using paint, follow our advice.

Clean the shoes

The first thing to do, logically, is to wash your shoes well, favoring hand washing rather than machine washing. You will not be able to completely restore your pair if you do not clean your pair.

As with renovation, you can use a cleaning kit. You will need a brush, soap or cleaning product and a cloth. Clean your sneakers by rubbing insistently, whether on the sides, the top or the soles.

If, despite cleaning, you still have scratches or areas that need to be whitened on your sneakers, then you will have to use paint.

Whiten with paint

To whiten your sneakers, we recommend using standard paint. You can whiten the leather, the fabric of the seams but also the soles of your sneakers.

Always apply the paint in several thin coats (2 to 3 coats in general) and allow it to dry well between each coat.

If you have holes, or pieces of leather, we advise you to read our article on sneaker renovation in which we focus more on this type of problem.

Whiten soles and mid soles

If your soles are yellow, you can also whiten them with standard white paint, preparing the surface well.

We recommend that you sand the sole well before whitening it, and apply a coat of glossy varnish to the less rigid soles which will act as a primer and which will strengthen the hold of the paint.

Please note, if your soles are made of gum or rubber, we do not recommend applying paint, because the hold on these materials is very complicated, even with good preparation.