Natural or dyed? A guide to sheepskin colors

Every sheepskin decision comes down to two questions. What size, and what color. Size is arithmetic. Color is where people get stuck, because the choice is not really between shades. It is between two different kinds of object.

Natural sheepskin

An undyed hide is the color the animal grew. Nothing has been added, and the tanning process is designed to leave the wool as it was.

That means the palette is fixed by biology: off white, cream, a range of greys from pale to almost black, warm browns, rusty brown, and spotted hides where the animal had more than one color.

What natural gives you is depth. Look closely at an undyed grey hide and it is not one grey. There are lighter fibers, darker roots, and shifts across the skin where the wool grew differently. That variation is what makes a natural hide look alive in a way a dyed one does not.

What it costs you is control. You cannot order two natural hides and expect them to match, and you cannot match one to a paint chip. If you are buying four skins for four dining chairs and you want them uniform, natural is the wrong choice.

Natural hides also age better in sunlight, because there is no dye to fade unevenly. A dyed burgundy skin in a south facing window will shift over a few years. An undyed grey one largely will not.

Our undyed range sits in natural color sheepskin, and the Icelandic, Austrian, Gotlandic and British hides are natural only.

Dyed sheepskin

Dyed hides are almost always New Zealand, because that wool takes color more evenly than any other. The range runs past thirty shades on some sizes.

What dyed gives you is precision and repeatability. If your sofa is a particular grey and you want the skin to work with it rather than against it, dyed is how you get there. And if you need six matching skins, dyed is the only realistic option.

It also gives you colors that do not exist in nature. Aubergine, imperial yellow, spiced apple, smoke blue, sage green. Used carefully, one strong colored hide in an otherwise neutral room is a very effective thing.

What it costs you is that quiet variation. A dyed hide is more uniform, which is exactly the point and also the trade off.

Choosing by what the room needs

If the room is neutral and slightly flat

Take a natural hide with real variation in it. A natural grey Icelandic or a spotted skin will add texture and movement without adding a color you then have to work around.

If the room already has a strong palette

Take a dyed hide in a color that sits alongside what is there, or a plain off white. Adding a second natural pattern to a busy room usually reads as clutter.

If you need more than two matching

Dyed, without much question. Order them at the same time so they come from the same batch.

If the hide will sit in direct sun

Natural, or a pale dyed shade. Dark and saturated colors are the ones that show fading first.

The most useful colors, in practice

Off white and ivory are the safest and the most requested. They brighten a dark floor and read clean against oak. They also show dirt, so think about where they are going.

Natural grey is the most forgiving color we sell. It works with almost any wood, hides everyday marks, and never looks dated.

Taupe and light honey warm up a cool room without committing to a color.

Brown and rusty brown are underrated. They sit well against leather and darker woods, where a white hide can look stark.

Black reads as graphic rather than soft, which is useful when you want the hide to be a shape rather than a texture.

The saturated colors, aubergine, burgundy, imperial yellow, work best as a single deliberate note. One of them in a neutral room is striking. Three of them is a mess.

A note on what you see on screen

Wool photographs poorly. Long wool catches light along its length and can look two shades lighter in a product photo than it does in a room, and undyed hides vary from the sample shown by their nature. If the exact shade matters, ask us before ordering and we will describe what is actually in stock, or send a photo of the specific hide.

Get in touch and we will tell you what a color really looks like.