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Traditional leather shoes don’t feel like trainers when you first put them on.
Unlike most canvas or synthetic shoes, leather shoes need some time to warm up and adjust to the shape of your foot. New leather tends to be very stiff, and can take time to soften. This is called the breaking in period.
There are big benefits to going through this breaking in period. Once you’ve worn in a pair of shoes, they will be perfectly moulded to your foot. This means that long term they will be beautifully comfortable and perfectly supportive in all the right places.
How long the breaking in process takes will depend on both the shoe and the foot in question.
- It’s important to make sure you’re wearing the right size shoe. If your new shoes are too small or too narrow, you’re likely to face a much trickier breaking in process.
- If your new shoes are already very similar in shape to your feet, it’s likely to be much easier.
- Shoes that are made of softer leather such as suede are likely to reach a point of soft flexibility more quickly.
- A leather sole will take longer to break in than a rubber sole, but once the leather sole is broken in, it will mould to your foot in a way that a rubber one never will.
- The thicker the leather of both the sole and the upper, the longer it will take for it to soften. This means that higher quality shoes often take longer to break in.
Keeping all these factors in mind, it could take as little as a week or two to break in your shoes, or it could take a month or more.
If you’re currently going through the break in period with a pair of good quality leather shoes, trust us when we say that your future self will thank you!
We’ve shared four tips for breaking in your shoes here.