Can leather sofas and toddlers coexist?

[MaeWest]

Need to replace our sofa - is leather practical or not? And will the cat scratch the hell out of it...?

Any opinions welcome

Leather sofas are so practical.

Get the darker colours though, our navy one

has been fantastic!

We have a cat, no toddler, but can verify that newborn sick/beer that dh spilt just wiped off our brown leather sofa. I's the cheapest one from argos, got it 3 years ago, and it still looks fab. Our cat likes sleeping on it, but has never scratched it.

I'd say a leather sofa is the most practical you can get with children.

I'd never have a cloth one with ds!

I am awaiting delivery of two gorgeous deep red velvet-type sofas from Laura Ashley.

Oh and I have two ds, aged one and three.

Have I been unbelievebaly stupid?

no they are great with kids and dogs everything wipes off with baby wipes fantastic

leather is fab for a sofa, our cat has left a few scratches, but i think leather looks fine even with a few scuffs. all the spills, sticky marks, goo, snot etc just wipe off.

our old fabric sofa on the other hand looked wrecked, even though the covers were washable, it was well worn (out!)

our cat doesn't really scratch the sofa, they generally don't like leather as they can't grip into it as much as fabric. the scratches on ours are just from him jumping off and on, but our sofa is deep red, and if you go over the marks with coloured shoe polish they go

Have a 4 year old dark brown leather sofa and a 3.7 yo dd. Sofa still looks great. I got a "free" specialist cleaning kit with it which I have never used - it's been cleaned over the years with baby wipes, dettol, ecover, soapy water etc. I love being able to really clean it IYSWIM.

No cats, but previous exp tells me it depends on the cat...

Pale leather with light seams can show the dirt.

We have a chocolate brown leather with 2 dcs - the youngest being a very bouncy ASD ds who wipes EVERYTHING down the sofa! Still looks great and so much easier that our previous washable fabric sofa that spent most of its time in the washing machine.

great for my ds ... as wipeable but as other people have said little marks from where the cats have jumped up (not scratches as such) are definitely noticeable!

We have a navy leather IKEA sofa. Pretty tough leather. Fantastic for babywiping! Cat hasn't touched it. He reduced our last fabric one to the bare wood though.

My mum has 2 leather sofas, both very soft leather and they are surviving my 2 being round a lot. They do show the cat claw punctures more than my tough cheaper leather. She has 3 cats and they largely ignore them as scratching posts even though they claw any fabric thing to death.

I've been informed that using 'sticky paws' strips from lakeland (like double sided tape) can discourage scratching. Also, tinfoil covering scratchy bits will discourage them. Though not sure how long you need to leave it on.

Our leather sofas survived dd and her many toddler friends climbing and spilling all overit, as well a constantly over excited springer spaniel. However the cats have scratched it all around the base.

I might look into those suzi2, I need an equivalent for walls as we are about to re wallaper to get ready to sell but am worried the cats will rip the new paper off.

I think they're non damaging so you could probably use them on the walls. They're quite expensive though and I've no idea how good they are... (disclaimer lol)

We have two leather sofas, eight cats and a toddler

The sofa's are holding up well, there are a few puncher marks where our old cat jumps up (he can't retract his claws well). The other cats don't bother or scratch the sofa at all.

I love the fact they are wipe down and easy to keep clean

We have both cream and dark brown leather sofas in various parts of our house- and would recommend the cream ones over brown any day! For some reason everything dries a sort of light grey/white colour in our house (eg weetabix) and if I've missed bits when cleaning up it dries and is very obvious on the brown but can't see it at all on cream. Suppose it depends how thorough you are with the j-cloth To be fair both colours are very practical in that they are wipe clean, if we'd had material I think we would have had to replace them a few times by now.

We have both cream and dark brown leather sofas in various parts of our house- and would recommend the cream ones over brown any day! For some reason everything dries a sort of light grey/white colour in our house (eg weetabix) and if I've missed bits when cleaning up it dries and is very obvious on the brown but can't see it at all on cream. Suppose it depends how thorough you are with the j-cloth To be fair both colours are very practical in that they are wipe clean, if we'd had material I think we would have had to replace them a few times by now.

Ooops sorry