Let’s face it! Laundry day is not always a walk in the park. From colour fading and bleeding to fabric pilling and lint, we have all faced multiple mishaps in the laundry room.
But don’t worry- most of these fabric care challenges can be solved with simple remedies. In this clothing care guide, we will share the most basic laundering techniques to prevent these misfortunes from ruining your laundry day.
Let’s get started!
Fading & Bleeding
You might have noticed that some of your clothes (e.g. denims) come out of the laundry cycle looking faded? That’s fading! And if you see the hue of one of your fabrics on any of the other garments in the cycle- that’s called “bleeding”.
Some textile dyes bleed every time you wash the garment. Even though the colour of the fabric doesn’t seem to change, they give away some of the dye in every cycle.
Other dyes like indigo tend to “wash down” or “fade” after every wash. These are most likely used on natural fibres like cotton. This is one of the reasons why your cotton faves start looking wornout only after a couple of washes.
No matter what the type, dyes generally fade when exposed to higher washing or drying temperatures, prolonged soaking, heavy-duty detergents, and bleaches of all kinds. Excessive wear, drycleaning chemicals, sunlight, ozone, and many other factors can also cause fading in your clothes.
The best way to prevent this from happening and keeping your wardrobe looking and feeling its best for longer is to wash your clothing whose colours bleed or fade separately from others. If you have a printed fabric with running dyes, it must be drycleaned (unless its madras print in which some bleeding is desired).
How do you fix colour bleed on clothes?
If you end up with colour bleed during the laundry cycle, do not dry the garments. Remove the article that caused all the trouble (sometimes, something as little as a single red sock is enough to ruin a full load of whites), then using the strongest detergent, hottest water, and if possible, the strongest type of bleach, rewash the entire load.
Other than this, indigo dyes also produce various shades of blue that can bleed and fade during laundry. Any fabric with this kind of dye should be washed only with like colours or darker colours that will not be tinted. However, if you accidentally wash something with your blue denim and it gets tinted, don’t worry! Simply rewash it before drying and the colour will come out.
Lint & Fuzz
Lint is the fuzz type formation or bits of thread and fibre that appear on the surface of your clothing after a few wears and washes. What happens is that clothing rubs off fabrics and other items during the washing, drying, and wearing processes. This leads to excessive abrasion and friction, resulting in the form of “lint”.
If any one of your fabrics has lint on it, it can stubbornly cling to others in the load, making them look dull and worn-out. Even worse, if the lint attracted by a fabric is of different colour than itself, it looks much more unpleasant.
Now, no matter what you do, all fabrics will produce at least a little lint over their lifetime. But some fabrics like those terry cloth towels, or chenille bathrobes usually attract more lint than others because it’s easier to rub fibres off their surfaces.
What is the best way to remove lint from clothes?
Lint can be a disaster for your wardrobe and favorite items (it’s always the favorite pieces that seem to get affected!). With some clothing care products, you can easily get rid of it from your clothing, making it looking and feeling its best for years to come.
For clothing made of at least 70% cotton, use a lint remover powder like BIORESTORE Cotton ReTergent. Pick your cotton faves with lint or pilling on them and add it in the laundry machine. Then using the instructions mentioned on the lint remover powder, add the right amount of BIORESTORE Re-Tergent directly in the washer.
Run a cycle at 40°C for 2 hours. When the cycle is finished, toss the clothing in a tumble-dryer (if possible) or rinse it with a small amount of your regular detergent. Just like that, your wardrobe will be revived fully with no trace of lint or fuzz on it.
PRO TIP: You can also use BIORESTORE cotton to revive secondhand or thrifted cotton clothing with lint or pilling on it.
Grayness or Dinginess in Clothing
If your laundry or some pieces of clothing appear grey or dingy after wash, rewash them in a slightly different manner. Start with a presoak using the strongest laundry powder at your disposal (and plenty of it), hottest water temperature, and strongest type of bleach that are safe for the fabric and its colorfastness’.
You can also try a double wash or add a laundry booster such as borax in the wash. Just make sure to rinse the fabric thoroughly after any such process and if you feel that there is still some residue left, give an extra round of rinsing with warm water. On whites, if nothing seems to work including bleach, use a “whitener” or “brightener” of your choice as the last resort.
Wrapping Up!
If none of these fabric care steps resolve the issue, you may have to make do with the final condition of your clothing. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, irreversible mishaps can happen during the laundry care process. If that’s the case, simply move on and make the best of the situation. After all, not every laundry disaster has a perfect fix, but it’s an opportunity to learn for the next wash!
