Design Your Fabric

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Why do fabrics printed with reactive dyes not fade very much after washing?

Many of our customers have asked about the washing instructions for our custom printed fabrics.

While the washing of custom printed fabrics will vary depending on the type of dyes used, the fact that Design Your Fabric prints using reactive dyes creates a very high level of colour fastness. Of note, there are a number of other custom fabric printers that use pigment dyes which generally means that their custom fabric will see some fading when washed.

Given that the reactive dye in the inks actually reacts with the fiber, it actually becomes part of the fiber, resulting in excellent wash fastness. Also, the fixation process that we use ensures that your print has a high level of permanency and to better serve our customers all fabrics go through a 3 step wash process before we ship it to you ready for you to start your creative process.

While it is true that colours will always leech from any fabric, it is very limited with the reactive dye process that we use.


All this being said, here are the general washing instructions for DesignYourFabric.com fabric choices.

For almost every fabric we offer – fabrics with a percentage of cotton, linen or silk – you will see very little fading if you wash your fabric in cold, warm or hot water.

Also of note:

  • it is best to dry clean delicate fabrics like wool and silk.
  • it is okay to machine dry but some fabrics may get damaged (i.e. pulled threads)
  • you can iron if needed but you should always be careful not to use too much heat as it may result in color transfer and melting of fabric