How To Clean Canvas And Knits

Canvas and knitted make for a special or unique touch on a colorway or sneaker. They can give your sneakers and outfit a type of beautiful simplicity when done right. But like Uncle Ben once said, with great power comes great responsibility. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you are cleaning your canvas or knit sneakers.

Use A Soft or Medium-Bristled Brush.

You usually want to use a soft or medium brush on these materials, especially with hand-scrubbing because you don’t want to fray the texture of the canvas or knit. When you are scrubbing hard on the mark, the last thing you want to leave is a rough patch.

Avoid Brushing With Excess Water.

When you are dipping your brush in the solution and getting ready to scrub, you should first make sure that you are shaking the excess water off the brush, so as to not leave watermarks. This tends to go unnoticed on darker colored sneakers, but with canvas and knitted sneakers in the lighter colors, it sticks out. Watermarks initially aren’t visible until after the sneaker has dried, and the more water left to dry, the worse the watermark.

Wash Sooner Than Later.

Remember when you were in that art class and y’all painted on a canvas board? (Maybe it was a paint & sip, for y’all ladies.) Well, you know how when you first apply a good swipe of paint across the canvas, it would still be fresh. But as time progresses, that first line of paint has dried up, gotten hard, solidified, etc. A canvas sneaker is not terribly different. If you’re able to clean the canvas sneaker sooner than later after wear or taking on a stain, do so. The longer you wait, the more baked in the stain is going to be. Knits work in a similar fashion.

Use A Washer, With Caution.

Just read this. But also, understand that your washer may thrash your sneakers around, so wash them with some laundry, if you can, so as to soften the cleaning process. Also, be advised that the washer may bend, or flatten your sneakers a little, but usually nothing that can’t be fixed with a little hand-forming back to shape after cleaning.