What Is Pu Leather And Is It Better Than Real Leather?

When you're choosing home decor, you love the look and feel of leather, but you don't care too much about where the material comes from—or how much it costs. But you really want an option that looks similar but isn't actually made from animal skin.

You're in luck. While there are a lot of leather imitations out there, there's an alternative that offers some of the benefits of the real thing: polyurethane (PU) leather.

What is PU leather?

PU leather is a faux leather polymer made from polyurethane, a type of plastic. It's 100% vegan because it doesn't have animal skin, unlike real leather. If you want to ensure that no animals were harmed in the making of your product, just make sure the product you buy doesn't have leather mixed in, including bi-cast leather, which does have animal skin.

According to Dan Weller, founder of Philadelphia-based Liberty Leather Goods, there are two types of PU leather: fully synthetic and semi-synthetic (also called 100% PU leather or split leather, respectively).

Semi-synthetic PU leather is made from a natural leather base with a dry PU plastic mix on top. Fully synthetic PU leather features a plastic coating over a base fabric material that is usually more plastic or polyester. Only fully synthetic options are completely vegan. Weller says you can usually look at the underside of the material to see what the base material is.

“The PU layer is often printed with a grain pattern to simulate the look of real leather,” he says.

Real leather tends to have less color and more imperfections in the grain than PU leather.