How to Wash and Care For Colourful Clothes

We all love bright, colourful clothes - but it’s important to wash and care for them correctly to keep your garments vibrant for as long as possible. Colourful clothes can fade and lose colour quickly, so they need to be treated with care! 

To help you keep your colourful clothes fabulous for longer, the team here at Joe Browns have put together a handy guide for washing your bright floral dresses, summery shirts and bold graphic tees.

It's a great idea to sort through your clothes before you wash them, checking the care label and placing them into colour groups. As we all know, it’s a bad idea to mix in a pesky red sock with your favourite white shirt, as you run the risk of turning everything pink!

To prevent your bright, vibrant colours from running and staining other clothes, make sure to separate your clothes into dark and lights. For example, would a bright orange shirt go in a dark load with black socks or in the lights? Probably neither - it’s not recommended to add bright vibrant colours in with colour that will dull it or even run onto your crisp white clothes. However, you could add in a colour catcher sheet to prevent colours spreading.

Wear and tear can be limited by turning your clothing inside out before washing and drying. Washing machines and dryers can be rough against the outside of your clothing, so turning your clothing inside out can reduce piling which results in duller-looking fabric, and could prevent the oh-so fabulous print on your graphic tee from fading. You should even turn your clothes inside out when drying your items outside as the sun can zap the colour from your fabulous clothes.

Always read the label! You don’t want your favourite clothes to get spoiled, so you should always check our care instructions. Some garments may need to be hand washed, cleaned in cold water or only washed with similar colours - these are such important instructions and, if you want to make sure your lovely clothes last a lifetime, you should always follow the care label instructions.

Stuffing your washer beyond its capacity can be tempting if you see your clothing piling up in the washing basket. Our advice? Don’t overload your poor washer! It will make your washer work ten times harder than it needs to. Plus, the water won’t be able to rinse your clothes properly so your gorgeous coloured garments won’t get a thorough clean!

It’s very easy to overdry your clothes using a tumble dryer, and this can be damaging to your clothes - particularly bright and dark coloured clothing. Overdrying will lead to colours fading, so make sure to set a timer so you don’t forget about your clothes. Your clothes should always still be slightly damp when you pull your clothes out of the dryer as this avoids overdrying. It is also advised to try and dry your clothes on a line rather than in a dryer as a dryer adds heat and friction to your beautiful coloured clothes.

The best piece of advice when washing colourful clothes is to wash your clothing in cold water! Most detergents still perform well in cold water so you won’t always need to use hot water to try and get those stains out.

To improve the lifespan of your remarkable colourful clothing, you should wash your clothes on a gentle cycle or even hand-wash your favourite pieces. There are plenty of different types of detergent on the market that have been specifically created to prevent fading and colour loss - always opt for these!