Causes of Laundry Fading

Hot Water

• Washing your laundry in hot water speeds the deterioration of the fabric, causes dark or bright colors to bleed and contributes to the fading of your wardrobe. To keep your clothing bright longer, wash your clothes in cold water whenever possible. Nearly all clothing comes just as clean with cold water as with hot, although if you have very heavily soiled items you may want to wash a load with hot water. As an added benefit, washing one load of clothing in cold water saves as much energy as driving a car nine miles.

Hot Dryer

• You may find tossing your washed laundry in the dryer, turning it on high and forgetting about it until the buzzer sounds tempting. Excessive heat in the clothes dryer fades your wardrobe though. To protect the color of your clothes, spin as much water as possible out of them in the washing machine, and check the dryer every so often so you can remove your clothes as soon as they are dry, which will save time on ironing as well.

Sun

• Hanging your laundry to dry is a pleasant old-fashioned undertaking that results in fresh-smelling clothes. If you leave them out too long in the hot sun, however, you'll find yourself with a basket full of sun-bleached items. Instead, bring your laundry in as soon as it is dry -- unless you're washing whites, however, which benefit from extra time to bleach in the sun.

Bleach

• Commercial bleach is well known as a laundry additive to get whites clean and bright. If you accidentally get some in a load of colored clothing, however, you'll have noticeable fading that will likely ruin your items. Bleach leaches the color out of clothing, especially natural fibers like cotton or linen, on contact. Even on white clothes, you should dilute the bleach or pour it into the water in the washer before adding your clothes to keep it from affecting the color of your socks and T-shirts.