So I was putting on sunscreen today in the car and had excess in my hand. I had to put the car in drive and then put some on steering wheel and continued driving. This got me thinking. Does sunscreen work on leather goods because it’s also skin. Hypothetically if you put on sunscreen every 2 hours on on leather. Would it keep it protected from UV damage?
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Leather doesn’t have melanin, so the most you’ll be doing is moisturizing it with something that wasn’t made to moisturize leather.
Hypothetically yes, it would help stop the UV reaching the surface, although some of the leather damage is just from heat which would remain the same.
However a lot of suntan lotions don’t get on well with plastics, and you probably want to keep it away from the interior of your car as it’ll ruin some plastics in a few days
Sunscreen should provide some benefit to blocking UV light for any material.
Both sunscreens work by intercepting the UV rays before reaching the skin by absorbing the UV with either minerals or organic molecules.
It’s probably not the best for many materials though because it’s formulated as a lotion for living human skin, lots of excess stuff.
Leather has been tanned which makes it chemically different than skin so I’m not sure that sunscreen is the perfect UV blocker but it should confer some protection. Might screw with your leather because of all the oils.
There are products made for leather to protect it from UV specifically. They’re called conditioners. I’ve never used one but I’d be curious to see how sunscreen like it is.