Fading and bleeding ayes … What to do if a colored garment’s bleeding dye tints a load of wash … Fading of acid, indigo, and fluorescent dyes … Fading caused by light … Loss of color from abrasion … What to do about fading … Grayness or dinginess … Holes and tears … Lint … Mildew … Perspiration … Pilling … Spots or streaks—blue, brown, or light spots … Spots from uneven cleaning or soiling … Miscellaneous causes of spots … Streaks, residue, stiffness due to hard water … Yellowing due to perspiration, skin oils, antiperspirants, hard water, chlorine bleach, inadequate rinsing, sunlight, or heat and age
Laundering problems have solutions in most but not all instances. This chapter can help in diagnosing a variety of common laundering difficulties and, where possible, it suggests remedies when things have gone wrong. In laundering, however, as in so many things, prevention is always better than cure. Good basic laundering techniques can usually prevent the misfortunes catalogued below.
Fading and Bleeding
Some dyes bleed slightly every time you wash a garment, even though the color of the garment does not seem to change. Other dyes, such as indigo, “wash down,” or fade, a little every time you wash them; these dyes are more likely to be used on natural fibers. Dyes may also fade as a result of exposure to water, hot water, prolonged soaking, detergents, and bleaches of all types. Abrasion, exposure to drycleaning fluids, light, ozone, and many other factors can cause fading. Abrasion,exposure to drycleaning fluids,light,ozone,and many other factors can cause fading.
Clothes and linens whose colors run should be washed separately from others or, if the loss of color is slight, washed with articles of like color. If a print has dyes that run, unless it is a madras print in which the effect is desired, it cannot be laundered and must be dry-cleaned.
People used to add salt or vinegar to the wash water in an effort to “set” dyes that run, and you still see this suggested in various “tips and hints” books and columns. Doing so might help reduce dye loss by reducing the alkalinity—and the cleaning power—of the wash water. It does not actually cause any color to “set,” however. The amount of salt or vinegar needed to do that would be very large (10 percent of the weight of cotton goods in salt, or 3 to 5 percent of the weight of wool or silk goods in vinegar). Moreover, salt or vinegar will not, in any event, set many classes of textile dyes.
What to Do If a Dye Runs and Tints Other Clothes. If a garment bleeds color that ruins the appearance of other articles in your laundry, do not dry them. Remove the offending piece and rewash the entire load using the strongest detergent, the hottest water, and the strongest type of bleach safe for the fabric. If this does not work, on white articles you might try a color remover. (See “Color removers,” pages 75-76.) Follow instructions and cautions on the package to the letter.
Fading of Acid Dyes. Silk, wool, cashmere, and nylon may be colored with acid dyes that discolor when exposed to underarm perspiration or prolonged exposure to soap or detergent and water. I know of no remedies for this problem in colored garments. For whites that have yellowed, see “Yellowing,” below.
Fading of Indigo Dyes. Indigo dyes produce various shades of blue that bleed and fade, particularly when exposed to bleach. Most people like their blue denims faded. Still, such garments should be washed with like colors or with darker colors that will not be tinted. However, if something is tinted by an accidental washing with blue denim, simply rewash before you dry it; the color will come out.
Fading of Fluorescent Dyes. Many fluorescent dyes are much less colorfast than other dyes, so wash fluorescent-dyed articles separately unless they pass a colorfastness test. Do not use stain removers or pretreatments on them without first testing in an inconspicuous area.
Fading Caused by Light. Light fading has no cure.
Loss of Color from Abrasion. Some types of dyes will rub right off fabrics. This is a phenomenon everyone is familiar with in blue jeans. The white areas at the knees and the seat of the pants develop because these are the points of highest abrasion. To forestall some of this—assuming that you want to—wash garments inside out.
The color on fiberglass curtains can also rub off against contact points, for example, the windowsill or furniture that touches the curtain.
What to Do About Fading. Usually there is no good solution to faded fabrics. Sometimes redyeing is possible, but my only notable successes with redyeing have been with blacks, which can really look like new. Before attempting redyeing, carefully study the home dye instructions. Some fibers, such as acrylics and polyesters, will not take home dyes. If the fading is irregular, redyeing may not produce uniform color, and you may find you preferred the faded look.
Grayness or Dinginess
If your laundry or some piece of it appears gray or dingy, rewash. Begin with a presoak, using the strongest detergent (and plenty of it), the hottest water, and the strongest type of bleach that are safe for the fabric. You might also try a double wash or the addition of a laundry booster such as borax. Be sure to rinse thoroughly after any such effort; one or more extra rinses are advisable. Detergent residues themselves will cause a dingy appearance. On whites, if all else, including bleach and strenuous laundering, fails, you might try a whitener/brightener. (See “Whitener/brighteners,” page 86.)
Holes and Tears
The common causes of holes and tears in fabrics, when these are not caused by long wear and use, are excessive bleaching, failure to rinse out bleach and detergent thoroughly, bleach spills, failure to dilute bleach properly before adding it to wash water, prolonged exposure to sunlight, or exposure to any of a wide variety of destructive household chemicals, such as acid toilet bowl cleaners and depilatories. Occasionally tears result if a fabric is washed with a pin in it, or when one garment gets caught on the open zipper, buckle, or hook of another.
Overloading the washer produces faster wear, which eventually results in fraying, holes, or tearing. Sometimes clothes catch on a rough, broken place inside the dryer or washer. It is imperative to locate such damage and have it repaired before you use the machine again.
Mice, insects, moths, or other pests can eat holes in fabric, too.
Lint
Lint consists of fuzz or bits of thread and fiber that rub off fabrics during laundering, drying, and wearing. Lint rubbed off one article in a load can cling stubbornly to all the others in the load, making them look unattractive. When the lint is of a different color from the article it clings to, it looks especially unpleasant. Fabrics with a pile and those made with fuzzy fibers—such as terry-cloth towels or chenille bathrobes—usually lint more than others because it is easier to rub fibers off them. But almost all fabrics will produce at least a little lint. Tissues left in the pockets of articles thrown into the wash load, however, are the most common cause of lint problems.
If your clothes frequently come out of the laundry covered with lint, be sure that you are sorting properly and preparing garments adequately for the wash. Separate the lint-giving articles (such as chenille) from the lint-taking ones (such as polyester) in the washer and the dryer; avoid washing or drying polyester or other synthetics with towels. Empty pockets of all contents, especially tissues and other debris. (See chapter 1, “Gathering, Storing, and Sorting Laundry.”)
Besides improper sorting, lint may be caused by overloading of the washer or dryer, which causes increased abrasion. Another possible cause is overdrying; by creating excess static electricity, it can cause lint to stick to clothes more stubbornly instead of being deposited in the lint filter. Or you may simply need to empty the lint filter more often in either washer or dryer or both. Most washing machines nowadays have automatic lint removal.
Rather surprisingly to us lay launderers, using too little detergent can cause excess lint. Just like dirt, lint is held in suspension in the water by chemicals in detergents that prevent soil redeposition. When you use too little detergent, not only dirt but lint gets redeposited on the clothes.
Mildew
Fabrics made of natural fibers will mildew if they are left damp or even if they are stored in a place with high atmospheric humidity and little air circulation. For recommendations on removing mildew, see “Mildew,” page 166.
Perspiration
Perspiration is usually mildly acidic as it emerges from your pores, but tends to turn alkaline when exposed to the environment. The pH of individuals’ perspiration, however, does not always fit the rule and may be acidic or alkaline, depending upon variations in metabolism. Dyes and some textile fibers are affected by perspiration, and, depending upon whether the pH of the perspiration is acidic or alkaline, different effects are likely. Fading, yellowing, discoloring, or weakening of cloth after prolonged exposure is quite common.
The most important thing to do to protect fabrics from such damage is simply to clean or wash frequently clothes and other fabrics that have skin contact. In the case of silk, it is advisable to wash or clean the garment as soon after wearing as possible. For other preventive measures and cures for problems caused by perspiration in clothes, see “Yellowing: Perspiration,” pages 142-43, and “Perspiration,” page 167.
Pilling
If pilling—the rubbing up of little balls of fiber on the surface of the cloth—is or may be a problem, try turning garments inside out for laundering and drying. Or you can put them in a mesh bag, making certain that it is securely closed. A shorter or slower agitation or tumbling period is also helpful. When the type of soil and kind of article permit, hand-wash without rubbing or scrubbing and either line-dry or dry flat. It is said that using fabric softeners helps too. Note that strong fibers may actually pill worse than weaker ones because the fibers that are rubbed into little balls do not break off but cling tenaciously to the surface.
The foregoing techniques are designed simply to reduce the amount of rubbing on the fibers. But because the fabric unavoidably gets rubbed in use and wear, there is not much that can be done to prevent entirely the pilling that develops on fabrics like sheeting or shirt material that are made of polyester blends or polyester and some other synthetic fibers.
There is a downside to turning garments inside out to prevent pilling: sometimes pills then develop on the inside of the garment rather than the outside. If the garment is worn next to the skin, this can feel rather uncomfortable. Turning a garment inside out also makes it more difficult to get the outside clean.
You can buy pill-removing gadgets at houseware stores. These are safer than shaving them with a razor.
Spots or Streaks
Blue Spots or Streaks. Blue spots or streaks usually consist of undiluted or undissolved detergent or fabric softener. They might once have been due to unmixed bluing, too. Few people use straight bluing anymore, but it is an ingredient in many detergents and all-fabric bleaches. To prevent detergent spots, dissolve and mix detergent in the water before adding clothes. To prevent softener spots, add softener to the dispenser at the start of the load or, if you add it during the final rinse, first mix it with water to dilute it before adding to the rinse water. To prevent bluing spots, see “Bluing,” page 75.
To remove undissolved detergent that is adhering to clothes, one detergent manufacturer suggests that you soak the article for one hour in a vinegar/water solution—1 cup white vinegar to 1 quart water—and then rinse thoroughly. My own method (so far 100 percent successful) is to soak the article in water as hot as it will bear until the detergent dissolves, and then rewash.
To remove fabric softener spots, rub with bar soap and rewash. You may need to repeat the process.
To remove bluing streaks, rewash.
Brown Spots. Brown or yellow spots on fabrics can be caused by iron in the water or iron that is deposited on fabrics by a steam iron. If your water contains too much iron, chlorine bleach may result in further discoloration. (The water on our family farm, for example, is so iron-rich that if we use chlorine bleach the clothes all turn tan.) To cure iron spots, see “Yellowing: Hard Water,” page 143. Do not use chlorine bleach to cure rust or iron-caused spots; this will only make the problem worse.
Brown spots may also be caused by a failure to rinse chlorine bleach out completely; by soil or soap or detergent or other residues left in the cloth that oxidize over time; by fabric softeners, when liquid softener is not fully mixed with the water or is not completely dissolved or when softener sheets in the dryer do not move around freely. (The softener spots may also be blue. See “Blue Spots or Streaks,” above.)
To prevent brown spots, always rinse laundry thoroughly. Brown spots caused by oxidized residues often may be cured by soaking and laundering with the strongest detergent, the strongest bleach, and the hottest water that the type, age, and condition of the fabric warrant. Follow by normal laundering with one or two extra-thorough rinses. On more delicate fabrics of cotton or linen that cannot take strong detergents or bleaches, the spots may remain. If they persist, try pouring on a solution of lemon juice or white vinegar mixed in equal parts with water. If you get partial results, repeat until the mark is gone. Or try a paste of salt and vinegar. This treatment is not for very old or very delicate fibers, however. On such items, if you very much want to get rid of the spots, you had better consult a specialist.
Storing linens and clothes in acid-free paper will prevent those brown spots that are caused by chemicals in woods and other materials that the fabrics may rest against in storage.
Light Spots. Pretreatments—the direct application of liquid detergent or a detergent paste to some areas of a fabric and not others—can cause light spots on some fabrics. Such light spots on unbleached, off-white, tan, or natural cottons and pastel cottons are sometimes due to optical brighteners in the products. (See “Optical brighteners,” pages 83-84.) Over time, the rest of the garment may become similarly lightened and the spots may disappear. If this doesn’t happen or you do not wish to wait, one detergent manufacturer advises that you can usually at least accelerate the process of evening out the color in the following way: Make a solution of 1 part heavy-duty detergent to 2 parts warm water in an amount sufficient to submerge the article. When you are sure that the detergent is thoroughly mixed or dissolved, soak the article for two hours. If you have to, weigh it down (with something that will not bleed colors or do any other harm) to keep it entirely submerged, or the part that sticks out of the solution will be a different color from the rest. Wring the article out. Then rewash without adding more detergent, and rinse very thoroughly. Repeat the entire process if necessary until uniform coloring is achieved. If you are dealing with one piece of a set, remember that it will be a different color from the others unless you subject the entire set to this procedure.
Spills of bleach or other chemicals can sometimes produce light spots too. Undiluted chlorine bleach splashed on dry cloth can completely strip most dyes. Some colored cottons will spot as a result of direct contact with non-chlorine bleaches. This will not occur if the bleach or bleach-containing detergent is first dissolved in water before you add the clothes. There is generally no remedy when color has been stripped or spotted by a bleach accident. Even redyeing will not remedy the problem because the cloth will not dye evenly.
Uneven Cleaning or Soiling. Polyester and polyester blends have an affinity for oily soil and a tendency to hold oily soil even when laundered. Particularly troublesome areas of clothes are any that contact skin and hair, around the chest and shoulders, and where the face and hair rub on pillowcases made of blends or polyester. Soak the problematic article in a solution of 1 cup heavy-duty liquid laundry detergent to 2 cups warm water for a couple of hours, then rewash in warm water without additional detergent. Rinse thoroughly. An extra rinse or two may be necessary to remove all the detergent. To keep this problem from arising, do not treat polyester and other synthetics more gently than is necessary. Launder frequently, pretreat (especially with solvent-containing pretreatment products), presoak, and use plenty of detergent and the hottest water that the fabric can bear.
Miscellaneous. Household chemicals often contain strong acids, bases, alcohol, or other strong chemicals that can affect the dyes on clothes or eat right through fabrics. Be careful to keep all of these away from fabrics: hair permanents, hair dyes, toilet bowl cleaners, scouring powders, pool chemicals, acids (including battery acids), bleaches, antiseptics, astringents, and any other strong household chemicals.
Benzoyl peroxide, which is used in acne medications and cosmetics, selectively removes many dyes, especially blue ones. If a susceptible color, say a blue, is mixed with other dyes, benzoyl peroxide might remove the blue and leave the rest, making a red spot on a purple dress, for example, or leaving a yellow spot on a green carpet. Problems resulting from this chemical may appear in places that contact the face or neck, such as collars, sheets or pillowcases, and towels.
Fiberglass curtains and drapes may be colored by pigments held in acrylic binder resins that can dissolve in solvent cleaners. Thus they cannot be dry-cleaned. They should be washed by hand unless care instructions specify some other method.
Streaks, Residue, Stiffness, Harshness, or Premature Wear from Abrasion Caused by Hard Water
Some nonphosphate detergents used in hard water can cause a buildup of residues that can make fabric appear streaky, render it stiff or harsh to the touch, and even contribute to its premature wearing out as a result of increased abrasion. Clean out such residues by soaking the article in a solution of 1 cup white vinegar per gallon of plain water in a plastic container. (Do not use a container that will rust or react with the acid vinegar.) Rinse thoroughly. To prevent the problem, use a nonprecipitating water softener with the detergent, or change to a liquid detergent.
Yellowing
There are many reasons why fabrics develop yellowed areas or become yellow overall. The chief ones are covered in this section. See also “Yellowing of White Cottons and Linens” and “Yellowing of White Nylon,” page 168.
Perspiration, Skin Oils, and Antiperspirant Stains. Any buildup of perspiration, skin oils, or antiperspirants on fabrics can result in yellowing. Everybody’s shirts tend to turn yellow under the arms, men’s shirts to a greater degree than women’s because men perspire more than women. Polyester fabrics in particular may turn yellowish in areas with the greatest skin contact as they age because they tend to hold any oil, including skin oil. There are both preventive and curative measures for this problem that are very effective.
To prevent perspiration yellowing on the underarm area of garments, men might wear undershirts and women might wear dress shields, especially when they are wearing silk. For your information, if you have never used them, dress shields are little padded wedges of cloth that attach to your blouse, slip, or bra or come sewn on a bralike garment. There are also disposable ones. (You can sometimes buy them where lingerie is sold. I have also found them in variety stores that carry sewing materials and in sewing and piece goods stores.) Undershirts or dress shields will absorb perspiration, oil, and antiperspirants, and you can wash them with brutal effectiveness. Unfortunately, many men feel as enthusiastic about undershirts as most women feel about dress shields. A second preventive measure, effective on any area of a garment, is to wash it (or dry-clean it) frequently and as soon after wearing as you can, because the longer perspiration stands on the cloth, especially silk, the more damage it does.
Once the problem has developed, the solution for hardier fibers (not silk or wool) is to do one or two exceedingly vigorous launderings. Try pretreating the affected areas, and then presoak for up to thirty minutes using an enzyme-containing presoak. Launder with the hottest water the fiber will bear, using plenty of detergent—more than normal or with a detergent booster added. Use the strongest bleach the fabric will bear as well. Rinse very thoroughly (synthetics in cool water).
Even when silks can be washed, they cannot take prolonged soaking, strong bleaches and detergents, or high water temperatures. Thus you must wash washable silk promptly and frequently. Try sodium perborate bleach on washable white silks, but only after testing.
If yellow perspiration stains have appeared in the underarm areas of hand-washable lingerie such as bras, slips, or camisoles, try pretreating by rubbing the affected area with a pure bar soap or a mild detergent formulated for fine and delicate washables. Let it soak in sudsy water for up to thirty minutes. Then wash the article normally, rubbing together the wrong sides of the fabric in the stain area if you can. See also “Perspiration,” page 167.
Hard Water. Certain types of minerals (iron and manganese salts) in the water will cause clothes to yellow or to acquire yellow or brownish spots. Use a nonprecipitating water softener to keep this from happening. (See Chapter 4, pages 67-68.) Iron spots may also be deposited on fabric by a steam iron. To remove yellow or brown streaks or overall discoloring caused by minerals in the water, use a rust remover advertised as safe for fabrics. These are available in hardware stores, in houseware stores, and from washing machine dealers. Or you can work on spots by spreading the fabric over a pan of boiling water and squeezing lemon juice on it, or by immersing it in a solution of equal parts lemon juice and water or white vinegar and water. (Lemon juice is more effective in my experience.) Do not use chlorine bleach on clothes suffering from this problem. It will only make the stain worse.
Chlorine Bleach. Chlorine bleach will produce yellow discoloration of silk, wool, nylon, and spandex. This discoloration is permanent.
Chlorine bleach may also produce a yellow discoloration on some white or light-colored, resin-treated cotton, linen, or resin-treated blends containing these fibers. I have never experienced this, and it seems to be quite unusual today. Chlorine bleach can cause yellowing of fabrics that have been treated with optical brighteners. This problem, too, appears to be quite uncommon. Sometimes interfacings have been resin-treated, even when the fabric of the garment has not. When bleached, the interfacing yellows and shows through the shirt, making it look unattractively two-toned. This possibility illustrates the risks of ignoring care label instructions and of failing to test bleach on all components of a garment. You can use a color remover on whites to try to remove the yellow coloration.
If you fail to rinse chlorine bleach completely out of clothes and then put them in the dryer, the heat can turn the chlorine left in the clothes yellow. Wash the clothes again and rinse them very well.
Overheating in the dryer can also cause yellowing of white or light fabrics.
Inadequate Rinsing. Alkaline salts from laundry products may remain in the fabric after washing and rinsing are completed. These residues can cause yellowing, discolor dyes, and irritate skin. The solution is to use less detergent, use more rinse water, or do one or more additional deep rinses. Institutional laundries add a “sour”—that is, an acidic compound—to neutralize alkalies. You can make your own sour by adding a cup of white vinegar (more for extra-large loads) to your rinse water.
Sunlight. Sunlight can produce yellowing in two circumstances. First, prolonged exposure to sunlight will turn white or very light cotton yellow. (This will not happen with rayon or linen.) The short-term consequence of putting cotton in the sun, however, is that it bleaches. If you line-dry white cottons, you can try to take care not to leave them out too long, or else hang them in the shade. Yellowing caused by sunshine can be diminished by chemical bleaching.
You may read that sunlight can also produce yellowing in some fabrics that have been treated with optical brighteners. (See “Optical brighteners,” pages 83—84.) It is true that when some optical brighteners are exposed to sunlight, they break down, causing clothes to appear yellowish and duller or to have a gray cast. They are particularly vulnerable to breaking down when they are wet, so this problem might happen as a result of line-drying. I am told, however, that laundering removes these degradation by-products, and because we generally launder frequently, they are gone before we start to see them.
Heat and Age. Aging is in large part a slow oxidation of the cloth, a process that naturally produces yellowing in many types of fabric. Heat speeds up the natural aging process. If you store clothes in hot places, such as in unventilated attics or near radiators, or if you overdry clothes in the dryer, yellowing is likely to result. Always store clothes in cool, dry places, and be careful to use proper dryer settings and to remove clothes from the dryer when they are just one degree less dry than you want them.
Sometimes laundering with bleach, where possible, will cure this type of yellowing. The optical brighteners in laundry detergents can sometimes help too. Or try using a whitener/brightener. (See “Whitener/brighteners,” page 86.)
White wools that yellow can sometimes be brightened by bleaching with hydrogen peroxide. Or you can try a whitener/brightener, although this will produce a bluish white that makes wool look like something else, such as an acrylic, an effect that many people dislike.
An overhot iron can scorch or yellow fabrics.
Polyethylene Bags. Plasticizers in the plastic bags used by dry cleaners may migrate to clothes and cause yellow places. I know of no cure, but this is easy to prevent by removing the bags when you bring the garments home. This is better for them in any case. (See chapter 18, “Closets for Clothes and Linens.”)