The ins and outs of choosing a colour
Choosing a colour to dye your item can be more challenging than some would imagine. While you may have the perfect colour in mind, there are some things that need to be considered that may adjust your original idea.
First and foremost, we do not dye anything white. White fabric is in fact devoid of dye, it is stripped of colour and then optical whiteners are used to create that clean white colour. This is only able to be done to brand-new unused, untreated fabric. By the time garments get to us, this would be impossible. That being said, there are many fabrics that we can remove the original colour, in order to dye the fabric to a lighter colour.
If your item is cotton, viscose, linen, tencel, ramie, bamboo, or silk, we may be able to perform a pre-process that removes some of the original colour. What colour it becomes afterwards varies from yellows to greys and it all depends on how it was dyed in manufacturing. We can do the stripping process and then consult with you on what colour choices you have. Unfortunately, polyester, nylon, acetate, and acrylic cannot be stripped.
If your item can’t be stripped, then you’ll need to take the original colour into consideration before choosing your dye colour. Many customers choose to dye these items darker to navy or black. Some of our very creative customers choose a season colour to combine with the original colour to create their own unique colour. For example, a yellow shirt dyed to a mid-blue will dye to a mystery green colour. A red skirt dyed to navy will transform into a dark purple. We are happy to help step you through these options.