Why fade jeans

Both are just awful, horrible dyestuffs from a technical point of view, but therein lies why we love them so much. Sort of like oil and water, indigo and cotton do not want to stick to each other. Behold, the indigo molecule! Image via Conservation-US. The indigo has to be broken at that molecular level with other additives to form a dye bath, which then oxidizes back to rigid indigo when exposed to light and oxygen see here for the full explanation.

A bucket of broken indigo, ready for dyeing. It takes an intense amount of heat and water to get them to bond together on a commercial scale. Most commonly, the yarns running up and down textile pros call these the warp are dyed blue in the indigo and the ones running side to side aka the weft are left natural.

Oxygen bleach will fade jeans but will not totally remove color in the powerful way chlorine bleach does. You may find this a safer but slower alternative if you want to try bleaching denim. Bleach really will damage stretch jeans, so you might want to try another method for those! Alternatively, if you want to control the evenness of the fade, you can apply the bleach and water using a spray bottle. You will need to take extra steps to protect yourself and your workspace if you do this, though!

You can use quite a few fading methods without bleach, but one of the safest no-bleach methods is to treat your jeans with lemon juice! Did you ever highlight your hair with lemon juice in the summer as you sat by the neighborhood pool?

Well, lemon juice works on denim in much the same way! Lemon juice contains a high concentration of citric acid, which brightens white clothes and fades colored fabrics. This all-natural product is safe to use and can prove effective, but you will not see the instant, dramatic change in color you get from using bleach.

You will want to buy bottled lemon juice for this method. You would have to squeeze a lot of lemons to get enough juice to soak your jeans! Some jean experts recommend soaking denim in hydrogen peroxide after other fading treatments to ensure a good white fade.

As a pro tip, you can also use peroxide in your laundry to brighten your white sheets, towels, and shirts! Before you begin, please note that you can purchase hydrogen peroxide in many different strengths. Check the percentage of peroxide in the mixture on the label. A greater percentage of peroxide makes the solution more effective and more dangerous for you, so wear gloves as necessary!

It takes a while, but the ultimate all-natural way to fade your jeans is to set them outside in the sun! Prolonged exposure to the sun will fade most natural fabric though some synthetic materials can resist its unforgiving rays.

Fading your denim in the sun is super easy. All you have to do is wash the jeans in cold water and either hang them on an outdoor clothesline or spread them flat on a clean bedsheet spread out in your yard. The tough part of this process is that you may have to repeat the wash and outdoor dry multiple times. If you have dark denim, you will see some change pretty quickly.

Paler denim may not fade as dramatically all at once. Sanding your jeans creates one of the coolest, most stylized faded looks of all! The risk in this method is that it does eat away at the denim fibers and can weaken the jeans, meaning that they may not last quite as long.

You can get varying effects by using different types of sandpaper, but using grit paper or a pumice stone will give a good basic result. If you want a ripped look, you may want to use grittier sandpaper.

Like sandpaper, salt can roughen and abrade denim, causing the fibers to loosen and displaying the white core of blue denim. On black jeans, you will probably get a grey fade with this technique, though washing in hydrogen peroxide as an after-treatment could brighten the fade! All jeans fade over time in the wash. The benefit of letting your denim fade gradually is that this gentle treatment will soften the fabric but will not weaken or damage its fibers.

The con is that it takes a while! Some jeans get pretreatments that help prevent fading in the wash. Raw denim often comes with warnings that you should not wash it for the first six months, as it could lose a lot of dye all at once! Hot water will fade denim much faster than cool water, but it will also make your jeans shrink.

Cotton shrinks easily when exposed to moisture, so this is a risky move to make! The safest way to fade your jeans in the wash is to use cold water settings. Using laundry detergent tends to speed up the fading process a bit. If you want to avoid fading your jeans, experts recommend leaving out the detergent and using vinegar instead!

How long will it take for your jeans to fade in the wash? This depends on how dark they are, to begin with! On average, you can expect to see some fading after three to four months of active wearing and washing.

The absolute safest way to fade jeans without damaging them is to let them wear out gradually over time! If you have stretch jeans, you may especially want to consider this method. Fade marks that build up on pockets especially get a lot of buzz in the denim world.

Remove the damp jeans from the wash and lay them on an old towel. Pour some bleach into a bowl. Dip the sponge into the bleach and wring it out. Rub the sponge over the spots you want to fade, such as along the length of the thighs and over the knees. Hang the jeans to dry in the sun. Spot fade jeans by placing a mixture of water and bleach in a spray mist bottle. Mist the areas you want to lighten for a more subtle look.

Fade and distress jeans with a metal bristle brush or fine sandpaper. This method works well on dark denim. Rub the areas of the jeans you want to fade with the tool until they fade to your satisfaction.