Dye migration and colour bleeding
The colour of the thing you are cleaning can move too. Every trade body that publishes a stain procedure opens by telling you to test for it.
In detail
A dye is held in a fibre or a coating by an attachment that a cleaning solution can weaken. When it does, the colour leaves where it was and goes somewhere else — into the cloth, into the water, or into the pale part of the same item. This is the risk that every serious stain procedure addresses before it addresses the stain: the carpet trade instructs pretesting any solution in an inconspicuous area for colour transfer or damage, and specifies a WHITE cloth throughout precisely so that no dye travels the other way, out of the cloth and into what is being rescued. Several sources name the specific agents that do it. Ammonia, used improperly, can cause a colour change, so a hidden area must be tested. Silk dyes are described as not reacting well to water, with home washing able to make colours fade or run, especially where light and dark are combined in one garment. On suede, cleaning agents will immediately darken nude leather — a colour change with no stain involved at all. Oxidising bleaches are the same mechanism deliberately: they destroy a chromophore and cannot tell the stain's from the fabric's.
Why
- Suede is explained by Dye migration and colour bleeding
- Viscose and rayon is explained by Dye migration and colour bleeding
- Silk is explained by Dye migration and colour bleeding
Sources for this page
Sources
Spot Solver: spot and spill removal procedures
The Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) · Trade or professional body
Relied on for: That any spot removal solution is pretested in an inconspicuous area for colour transfer or damage, that a white cloth is specified so no dye transfers into the carpet, and that ammonia used improperly can cause a colour change. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — Sprints 5-10 read fifteen entries stain by stain. Sprint 30 enumerated the database from the publisher's own spot-solver sitemap — 296 entries — and read 134 more, chosen by open demand and by soil class rather than alphabetically, plus the generic 'Unknown' entry. 135 of 296 entries now read. Supports the claim as stated.
Drycleaning & Laundry Institute International (DLI) · Trade or professional body
Relied on for: That some silk dyes do not react well to water and that home washing can cause colours to fade or run, especially where light and dark colours are combined in one garment. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The whole page: fibre character, home-washing risks, dye bleeding, perspiration. Supports a narrower statement — our claim was reduced. This closes the silk gap open since Sprint 3, but narrower than CleaningHQ had hoped. The silk record can now rest on a professional body for the practical guidance — home washing risks, dye bleeding, chloride from perspiration, drycleaning as the default — but the alkali-hydrolyses-protein mechanism CleaningHQ wanted to state is NOT in this source and remains an interpretation from general chemistry, labelled as one. No bleach position may be attributed to DLI.
Leather Care and Cleaning Guide
The Leather Institute, 2011 · Trade or professional body
Relied on for: That cleaning agents will immediately darken nude leather. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — General care and cleaning instructions, basic and advanced cleaning technique, and the Suede section. Supports the claim as stated.
Last reviewed by a person on .