What makes clothes fade

Our Products. About Downy. Fabric Protection. Follow directions. Turn clothes inside out. Wash clothes in cold water. Use the gentle cycle.

Use a fabric conditioner. How do clothes Fade in the wash? Protect your clothes with Downy. More tips for the clothes you love. See More Tips. Wash in cold water. If you usually throw all your clothes into one load, cold water is the setting to choose. Rule of thumb: the warmer the water, the quicker the fading. Wash lights, darks and whites separately. The best approach is to wash dark clothes with other darks, lights with light, whites by themselves.

Learn your washer settings. If your clothes are just lightly soiled, don't choose the Heavy setting. This just adds more wear and tear and encourages fading. Instead, select a less vigorous setting for your load. Hang dry if possible. It's convenient to use the dryer for everything. But it roughs up the surface fibers on your clothes. This can make them look faded, even if they are still full color.

For that reason, you may want to just get it over with and wash your clothing again and again right away to get the look you want. The downside to this method is that the fabric in your clothing will wear out during this repeated washing process.

The tumbling action that happens in modern dryers creates a lot of friction on the surface of your clothes, roughing up the surface fibers so that they may appear faded over time. Placing clothing in a dryer on high heat can also cause the fibers inside the material to relax, making the garment feel softer to the touch. As a word of warning, you should know upfront that putting pretty much any type of material in the dryer will wear out the fabric.

Yes, the dryer is convenient, and it does create that soft texture that feels so nice, but air drying will prolong the lifespan of your clothes by years more than using a dryer will. Plus, the dryer will shrink some types of fabric. If your care label says to air-dry, you should not use this method!

You can achieve a faded surface on your clothing by placing it in the dryer after washing it. This is not a method per se; all you have to do is put the garment inside the dryer and turn the dryer on! The tumbling movement on any setting will cause friction and some fading. Just know that the dryer can damage some types of material, especially anything that contains spandex.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can choose to go all-natural and fade your clothes outside in the sunlight! The downside to sun fading is that you do not get instant results. You generally have to layout your garment for at least a couple of sunny days before you see fading. Other potential issues include clothing treated with UV-resistant chemicals. You see this often in synthetic sportswear, such as running tank tops or t-shirts.

These clothes should not fade, no matter how long you leave them out! Natural fabric will fade much more quickly than synthetic fabric, as well. So check the label inside your garment to find out what type of material you have to deal with! Sun fading will create some of the prettiest, most vintage-looking hues in your clothes, but you do need to keep a sharp eye on the process as you go.

The main thing to remember if you try the sunlight method is that you need to monitor the situation to see how much a garment fades. Sunlight can and will eventually fade most garments, even black jeans! Laundry experts offer mixed opinions on what effect baking soda has on clothing. Some insist that you can use baking soda in place of laundry detergent and that it brightens white clothes and does not fade colors at all. Others suggest that baking soda rubs on the fibers of your garments, causing them to roughen and fade.

Science does back up the fact that baking soda will damage some fabrics. For that reason, you should not try this method on a garment that contains nylon, elastane, wool, or silk. The most effective way to use baking soda is to combine it with salt, as you will see in the salt method below.

That said, you can achieve more gentle results with baking soda alone, as well. Some garments, especially made out of synthetic material like polyester, have special anti-fading properties that will not react much to baking soda.

For those, you may want to try the more intense salt and baking soda soak. Vinegar contains something called acetic acid, which can break down and remove many stains from clothing.