Hide vs. Leather: What Is the Difference?

A hide is the raw skin of a large animal; leather is that hide, or a smaller animal's skin, after it has been tanned. Tanning is the dividing line. An untanned hide dries hard and rots when it gets wet again, while leather dries flexible and does not rot.

Rawhide sits in between: cleaned and dried, but never tanned. This page is part of our guide to where leather comes from and how it is made.

Hide, rawhide and leather at a glance

What "hide" means

In everyday English, the Cambridge Dictionary defines a hide as an animal's strong, thick skin used for making leather. The leather trade narrows it down. A hide comes from a large animal such as a cow or buffalo, while a skin comes from a smaller one such as a goat, sheep, deer or pig.

A pelt is a different word again. It means the skin and fur of a dead animal, or the skin with the fur removed.

Sellers also use "hide" loosely for finished leather, as in a "cowhide jacket"; dictionaries list cowhide as the skin of a cow or the leather made from it. That is a name for the source, not a sign the material is raw. The weight classes and trade terms are covered in hides vs skins in leathermaking.

How hide becomes leather

A tannery takes the hide through preparation, tanning and crusting, and many leathers also get a surface finish. Tanning makes the change permanent. Leather is a stabilized material made from raw hides that would otherwise rot, and it does not swell when wetted back.

The two best-known methods are chrome tanning, the most common today, and vegetable tanning with bark tannins, the oldest. Cattle are the main source, as explained in what cow hides are.

Chuck Dorsett of Weaver Leather Supply compares chrome-tanned and vegetable-tanned leather side by side, starting from the point that the same hide becomes very different leather depending on how it is tanned. Figures he gives, such as the share of leather that is chrome-tanned and how long each tannage takes, are his own and are not sourced on this page.

Rawhide: the in-between material

Rawhide is a hide that has never been tanned. Fur, meat and fat are removed, and the hide is usually stretched on a frame and dried. It softens and stretches if left wet.

That stiffness is the point. Rawhide covers saddle trees and is used for drumheads and whips. Many "rawhide" laces for boots and baseball gloves are actually tanned leather, because true rawhide is not pliable when dry.

First Nations peoples, including the Sioux, wrapped wet rawhide around broken long bones; as it dried it held the bone like a cast. American Indian tribes also used hides for tepees, moccasins and buckskins.

What the label tells you

In the US, the FTC leather guides say the unqualified word "leather" should only describe a covered product whose substantial parts are all leather. If a material looks like leather but is not, the label should say so, for example "imitation leather," "vinyl" or "not leather".

No source in our library names a single "lowest" leather grade. Two labels need a closer look:

• Bonded leather is shredded leather scraps bound with polyurethane or latex onto a fibre mesh, with 10% to 90% leather fibres. US guidance says it should not be sold as plain "leather".
• "Genuine leather" does not describe a grade, and it often means heavily processed split leather.

Material with no hide at all is covered in how faux leather is made. Grades such as full-grain sit in our leather types guide.

Which word to look for, by reader

Some makers state the hide on every product. For example, Leather Collection men's leather jackets list cowhide, sheepskin, lambskin or goatskin on each product page.

FAQ

Is hide the same as leather?

No. A hide is the raw skin; leather is the hide after tanning. People still say "cowhide" for finished cow leather.

How does hide become leather?

A tannery prepares the hide, tans it and then thins, lubricates and often dyes it in a stage called crusting.

What is the lowest quality of leather called?

There is no single named grade in our sources. Bonded leather (shredded scraps plus a binder) and "genuine leather" (often processed split) are the labels to check.