Water, Washing, and Dyes: How H2O Leads the Way to Color Success

The following article was excerpted from Spin Off Summer 2018. To read the full version, visit the Spin Off Library.

Color gets our hearts racing a little faster. We all swoon over beautifully dyed fiber. Hold that little pot of dye powder in one hand and wool fiber in the other, and your mind starts dreaming of the beautiful magic they will make together. It’s abundantly clear that our love affair with color is why we dye fiber in the first place.

To make this color magic happen, there is another often overlooked key player in the dyeing process: water. Water is colorless, and although we use it to dissolve the dye powder and wet down the fiber, it’s not apparent at first glance that it plays such a critical role. Because water doesn’t appear to do anything interesting, it is easy to overlook it.

However, water makes up 99 percent or more of the dyebath. It may not be as sexy as the colorful dye molecules, but water is a “make or break” factor in whether the dye strikes quickly or slowly and whether it binds, which in turn affects how the colors play with one another and whether the dye will bleed. In short, water determines the success of your dyeing results.

Photo by Rony Michaud from Pixabay

Furthermore, once the dye is bound, water conditions during washing will determine if the dye remains bound or washes away. Even if you never personally dye fiber, understanding water is critical to keeping your hand-dyed items washfast.

There are many types of dye, classified by their reaction mechanisms and the materials they dye. This article focuses on weak acid dyes, among the most common