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How to Shine Your Shoes Like a Champion

The Swedish shoeshine champion gives us a rundown of how to clean, revive, and shine your high end footwear.

David Shuck

Shoeshining is a task we are all familiar with in concept but I’m guessing few have achieved in practice. The mirror shine on your brand new pair of Alden, Meermin, or Grant Stone shoes soon becomes a mottled matte and you’re beset by a labyrinth of creams, waxes, and brushes, unsure how to ever get it back again.

Fear not! You can make that shine return with greater lustre than before with just a few simple steps and products. We’ve enlisted the help of Swedish Shoeshine Champion Anders Sundström, who has developed a new line of shoe care products called Paul Brunngard that aim to source the highest quality ingredients and encourage everyone to polish like a champion.

Follow along the steps below and you’ll be able to see your self-satisfied grin in the toe of your spit-shined Oxford (if any of the terms below sound unfamiliar, you can brush up on our guide to shoe terminology).

Materials

There’s no limit if you want to follow the enthusiast route for shoe care and shining, and if you want to jump into the pool with both feet, Paul Brunngard offers a handsome valet case full of every product and brush you would need to achieve a mirror shine on practically any shade of leather.

All of the Paul Brunngard materials we’re covering today include:

• Reviving Cream – cleans and moisturizes leather with a combination of soft waxes like beeswax and rose wax and rejuvenating oils like mink and shea butter

• Artistic Cream – moisturizes and protects leather and enhances the color for a light shine

• Sublime Wax – softer wax for an all over shine

• Spitshine Wax – hard wax to build layers of mirror polish on the toe and heel

• Wild Boar Brush – stiff for removing dust and dirt

• Horsehair Brush – middle ground for cleaning and buffing

• Yak Hair Brush – soft for buffing

• Sole Edge Iron – hard wood tool for burnishing shoe sole edges

If you’re just starting out, though, we’d recommend beginning with a horsehair brush, shoe cream, and a clean cloth.

1. Clean – Brush the Shoe

The first step is preparing your shoes and knocking all the dirt and dust that may have accumulated on them. So take out those laces if there are any, insert shoe trees if you’ve got them (wadded socks if you don’t) and give it a thorough cleaning with a stiff brush, like the Wild Boar Bristle or Horse Hair.

Pay special attention to the throat and where the upper meets the midsole or other more inset areas where grime may have collected.

2. Rejuvenate – Moisturizing Cream

Dress shoes are most commonly made of leather, formerly an animal skin. And like your own skin, it needs to be moisturized regularly in order to prevent drying out and cracking.

Apply a small dab of a cleaning cream like the Reviving Cream and rub it into a clean cloth before you work it into your shoes’ uppers. The cream will remove any remnant waxes or polishes from the shoe and impart moisture into the pores of the leather so use a decent amount of pressure. Wait a minute for it to dry and then apply a second coat.

After that layer has dried, take a horse hair brush and brush off the excess cream. The leather should feel softer and more supple and closer to its original color already.

3. Restore and Protect – Shoe Cream

The next step up the ladder is to apply a shoe cream like the Artistic Cream, which you will likely want to match to the color of your shoe. This is the first step of the actual polishing process and the waxes and oils in the shoe cream will form the base of all the layers that will come after it. Like the wax on a car, it will also help protect from water and dirt.

Rub a small amount onto a cloth and work it into the shoe in a thin layer all over the upper. Wait for it to dry and settle so the pigments and oils can penetrate into the leather (about an hour) and then apply a second layer and let it dry as well. Take a horsehair brush and use it to brush off all the excess product, then move to a softer brush like the Yak Hair, which will buff the cream into a light shine and luster.

If you only get one product for your shoes, it should be something like the Artistic Cream, as it has a good balance of all the waxes and oils needed to moisturize, protect, and shine your shoes all at once.

4. Shine – Soft Wax

We’re finally ready to start the true shine process. Most hard waxes are only applied to the toe and the heel areas of the shoe that aren’t subject to flexing and creasing but a softer wax, like Paul Brunngard’s Sublime Wax, can be applied to the entire upper and should maintain a shine if brushed properly in the flexed areas like the vamp and the quarter.

Take some soft polish wax and rub a small dab onto your index finger, the heat from your hand should be enough to melt it slightly, and apply a thin layer to the entire shoe upper. Once it’s worked in, use the horse or yak hair brush to remove the excess material. Take a tiny amount of water onto a clean cloth and rub it into the toe and heel (non-flexed areas) to begin the polish. Rest the shoe to let the wax set, then go back with another layer, buffing and polishing with a soft brush like the yak hair.

Products like the Sublime Wax allow for a quick and easy application that can create an impressive shine throughout the shoe.

5. Mirror Sheen – Hard Wax

If you’re ready to take your shoes to the ultimate level, it’s time for the hard wax layer(s). Paul Brunngard calls their hard wax product Spitshine. Traditionally, a high polish shine is only applied to the toe and heel of a dress shoe upper, as it won’t maintain the shine where the shoe flexes and creases. Using this harder wax is similar to the soft one, but it can be layered over and over and over to get truly ridiculous levels of shine.

Apply a very thin layer of wax to the toe and heel of the upper with your finger and then just a drop of water and a clean cloth to polish, polish, polish. If you want to achieve a competition-winning shine, Anders recommends waiting hours or even days between layers to let the wax settle and working up to 20 layers worth of wax, “like building a house.”

This is a process for professionals or true enthusiasts but once you get a taste of what’s possible with spitshine style waxing it’s hard to go back.

6. Sole Edge Dressing

The final part of your shoe that you may want to service are the sole edges. These come into contact with water and dirt more frequently than any other piece you’re polishing, so protecting them can be crucial to prolonging the life of your shoes.

Start with a matching shoe cream, usually a little darker than the upper to provide contrast, and rubbed in with a cloth along the entirety of the sole edge. You can rub and buff out with a brush, but if you want the cream to penetrate deepest into the leather, you can use a sole edge iron, which is a shaped wooden tool that allows you to apply a lot of pressure on the sole edge. The iron burnishes and squeezes the waxes and oils into a thin uniform layer for maximum protection.

Like the upper, you can follow up on the cream with additional layers of soft and hard wax to achieve the ultimate in shine and protection.

Conclusion

When you’ve finished, you should be able to see yourself reflected back at you from the toe of your cleaned, polished, and well protected shoe. Anders recommends following this process about once a month if you’re wearing your shoes regularly and emphasizes the need for shoe trees to help your shoes recover and prevent creasing.

If you’d like more tips or to see Anders in action, you can follow along with his video guides on Youtube where he details every step of the process. All the products mentioned can be found on the Arterton website and ship worldwide, happy polishing!

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