This concept applies to different shades within the same color range as well – dyeing a neon yellow skirt down to mustard yellow is a careful exercise in small additions of brown and a more neutral yellow, and a lime green jacket can become olive green with some browns and darker mossy greens. For example, if you’re overdyeing a cooler blue with red to make purple, you may need to add a bit of pink if you’re aiming for a warmer purple, or tone it down with a pinch of green if you want a darker, muddier color. This category of overdyeing is all about adjusting your dye bath for tone. You may have a lighter-colored item that you want to be darker – a light pair of jeans to dye black, or a green shirt to dye brown.

If you’re set on a lighter color, you can always pre-treat your fabric or garment with bleach to lighten it, but do keep in mind that bleach can damage fabric in large quantities so always test a swatch first! In general, overdyeing only allows you to go darker, not lighter, and you’re always going to be limited by the color of the garment or fabric you’re starting with. It’s easy enough to understand that a red shirt in a blue dye bath will result in a purple shirt, but what happens if you’re not starting with a primary color, or when there’s not a clear mix available? Unfortunately, there’s no magical overdye color that will help you turn a pair of dark brown pants neon yellow. Dyes, like paints, are composed of pigments, and overdyeing is essentially just mixing pigments, the same way you’d mix paint. You probably learned something about color mixing in school – red and blue make purple, yellow and blue make green, and the difference between primary and secondary colors. Related: Fabric Dyeing Techniques – 12 Different Ways How to choose the right dye color when overdyeing: If you have, for example, spattered oil or tomato sauce all over the front of a shirt, you may wish to consider a scrunch-dye, tie-dye, or low-immersion dye bath that will add some texture to disguise these stains, as overdyeing them in a solid color is unlikely to completely hide them, even if the stains are very light and you’re planning a very dark color. You’ll want to pre-wash and stain treat thoroughly, but also keep in mind that these areas can absorb dye differently. Stains that are visible or barely visible can show up in a freshly overdyed garment. If possible, you should always try to test your project with a swatch before you commit the whole thing to a dye bath.Īnother thing to keep in mind – one that doesn’t add any complexity but may add one extra step – is that if you’re working with a previously worn garment, you’ll want to pay special attention to pre-washing and stain treatment. Dyes can occasionally behave in surprising ways – some colors are mixes of different pigments and these pigments can absorb at different speeds or react with the base color differently, impacting the outcome of your dyed project. We’ll break down some of the key things to look for when planning an overdye project, but ultimately the biggest trick you can use is to test your color mixing before dyeing your entire garment.

If you’re starting with a garment or fabric that has a color already, and you’re trying to arrive at a particular color, you’ll need to do a bit of planning (and potentially testing!) to figure out what color you need to use for your overdye bath. The added layer of complexity comes only in the planning stage. You still have the same choices of dye depending on the fiber content of your garment or fabric, and you still need the same supplies as you would with any other dye bath.

It is no more complicated to overdye fabrics than it is to dye white items. Is it easy to overdye fabric and clothes? In natural dyeing, Overdyeing is used to create colors with dyes that might interact badly with each other if they were mixed directly, and it’s also used to update colors that fade over time. Aside from adding depth, texture, and new tones, it’s also an incredibly useful way to breathe new life into old garments, disguise stains, and update garments to a color you’ll actually wear. This could mean that you use multiple dye baths one after another to build a depth of color, but it could also mean dying an existing non-white garment to a new color. “Overdye” is the word dyers use to describe layering dye baths on top of each other.

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