Color-Related Issues
Bleeding and fading colors are laundry problems that many dread because both can mean the end of a favorite piece of clothing. Luckily, there are methods to prevent these color issues from cropping up in your laundry room.
Take Your Temperature
Many times the cause of color bleeding is washing at the wrong temperature. This can be avoided by reading care labels on your clothing and using the recommended temperature. Using a good quality laundry detergent will thoroughly clean your clothing, no matter what the water temperature and many brands now have special formulas that work well in colder water. If you’re unsure what temperature to use, stay on the safe side and use cold water for colors and anything with both white and colored fabric.
Color Bleeds
Transferred dyes are not always removable. Attempting to remove transferred dye from a colored fabric might cause the original colors to fade, so it's up to you if you want to take this risk. To treat white fabrics, use liquid chlorine bleach or a fabric color remover and follow the package instructions carefully. For colored fabrics, soak in a premium liquid laundry detergent for up to 30 minutes, then wash as usual.
Don’t Fade Away
We love bright bold color in our clothing, until it fades. A bright red shirt that you love can quickly turn into a dust rag when it fades to a washed-out pink. Here are a few tips to keep your colors rich and beautiful.
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Read care labels. Check for instructions to wash only in cold, or with like colors. And don't forget to check for drying instructions as well.
- Sorting clothes is essential to protecting color. To prevent dark colors from fading, keep like colors together.
- Turning garments inside out for washing and drying can reduce color fading.
- Wash colors in cold water. Hot water can pull dyes out of fabric. Many laundry detergents now work as well in cold water as they do in warm.
- For extreme protection of your colors, you can wash on your machine’s gentle cycle or hand wash your special clothing.
- There are laundry detergents available that claim to help protect color. It may be helpful to try this type of detergent on your colored clothing.
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Tips & Tricks
Many stains are more likely to be removed entirely if soaked in cold water before it has had time to set.
If in doubt, test your color garment for colorfastness – apply warm water to an inconspicuous part (inside of the hem, for instance), then press this part with a warm iron between two pieces of white cloth.
To protect your favorite garments, try turning them inside out before washing.
Use a partitioned laundry basket to sort your laundry as you remove it.
Overloading your washing machine could mean that your clothes don’t properly get clean.
White streaks of powder left behind on your clothes due to undissolved detergent are usually caused by overloading your machine, and can be removed with an additional rinse cycle.
Washing much smaller loads on non-cotton cycles to give more freedom of movement in the drum and result in better cleaning.
Using too little detergent can cause whites to become dingy as there are insufficient ingredients to hold soils in the water so they don’t redeposit on the garments.
Overdosing in a soft-water area can lead to “oversudsing” which, in extreme cases, can mean suds come out of the machine.
Always check the fabric care label for the manufacturer’s washing recommendations.
Some dyes will bleed even in very cold water, so always sort your washing into light colors, dark colors, whites, and delicates.
To compensate for washing at lower temperatures, try using a Cotton (most agitation) or Synthetic cycle, if the garment care label allows. There are also detergents specially designed to work in cold water.
Whenever possible, dry your clothes outside on a line; you could see significant energy savings.
Make sure to close all zippers, fasteners, and hooks to prevent and reduce abrasion of fabric and consider placing delicate items into mesh laundry bags.
To pre-treat stains, apply undiluted laundry detergent directly onto stained areas. For best results, allow product to sit on stain for a few minutes, scrub product into stain, then wash.
When adding chlorine bleach, always use the bleach dispenser on your washer to ensure that it is added at the right time in the wash cycle. If your machine does not have a dispenser, add chlorine bleach at the end of the wash cycle.
Check garment care labels for recommended wash temperature.
For all HE washers, make sure to use a low-sudsing HE detergent.
Use the right amount of detergent. Follow package directions carefully. For heavily soiled and/or large loads, use more detergent.
If you do not have a detergent dispenser on your machine, add the detergent while the washer fills with water, ensure the detergent has dissolved, then add the clothes.
Keep your washing machine free of residues by running a monthly wash cycle with Tide Washing Machine Cleaner.
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