What is midsole icing?

Have you ever had your white shoes lose their beautiful glow? And have you tried washing them just to find out that they’re still yellow?

When the white or translucent soles of your shoes come in contact with oxygen, they will eventually turn yellow or lose their transparency. This means that even though your shoes might be clean, they will still look a little tired and discolored. Luckily, there’s a solution. Midsole icing is the process of un-yellowing the soles of your shoes. It helps to turn your white midsoles to their former glory without using any dyes. To un-yellow your shoe soles, we first thoroughly clean them to ensure they actually need to be iced. We then coat them with a special icing sauce and place the shoes in a UV-light box for at least eight hours. As a side note, we actually tried 4-5 different UV lights until we finally found the one that did the trick for us!

If you’re curious to try icing your shoes at home, you can use a homemade icing solution, wrap your shoes in plastic wrap, and let them soak in some sunlight. Although, if you’re in Estonia, finding enough sunlight to actually make a difference might be difficult for nine out of the twelve months. If that’s the case, you can always hit us up and we’ll offer you midsoles icing at our workshop.

NB! Unfortunately, we do not ice ECCO shoes. Because of the materials used in their soles, they do not respond to icing at all.

 

Hey Sneakerheads and people who love their shoes!

When you buy a new coat or a jacket, or any piece of clothing really, it has a label that tells you how to take care of it: hand wash or washing machine/ dry cleaners only, max water temperature, tumble dryer or no no, etc.
However, when you get yourself a pair of nice sneakers or shoes, you get nothing of that. Unfair, right? We know! Therefore, we are here to help 😉 We are going to send you some cool shoe care tips every now and then, so that your favorite pair serves you a long and pleasant service!
Today we want to break the myth that a mighty washing machine can take care of these dusty dirty pair of sneakers you were dancing in on a music festival in the forest. Nope, in fact, if shoes could speak – 95% of them would scream its way out of that tumble barrels!

And here are some of the reasons why:

• Washing machine can and most probably will damage the glue in trainers, which can cause them falling apart and the yellow glue coming out on the edges (not pretty)
• Sneakers will lose its form and shape, especially if you use high temperature, the fabric can shrink
• The detergent will leave yellow staining that is hard to remove (we had a fair share of those cases to fix)
• In case the inside lining/ insoles are colored – it will cause paint leakage and staining the whole shoe. After this the shoes go straight into the trash bin, unless you don’t mind a bit of a discolored hippy look, of course)
  

In case you do not trust us and still want to risk it, here are some tips that could (possibly) save that pair of trainers:

• Remove laces, insoles and any dirt before putting shoes into the washing machine
• Put the trainers in a special washing bag and add some towels to go along
• Use cold water and NO tumble dryer!
• Put to air-dry, preferably shady spot with some shoe trees or just paper inside to preserve the form

Want to wash your shoes safely? Hand wash only! We shall be giving more tips on how to do that with different type of materials in our next posts!

Yours, Cleanstep Team!