Factors Affecting Appearance After Washing of Garments
Md. Shafiqul Islam (Newton)
Manager, Softlines
Epyllion Testing lab ltd
Gazipur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: newton@epylliongroup.com
Consumer buys textiles such as clothing fabric, bed linen, home furnishings or any other related material. He or she expects it to perform satisfactorily during use in terms of color stability and appearance retention, including shape, pilling/fuzziness etc. The problems associated with durability of color and appearance on wet treatments such as washing and wet rubbing are of global nature, which eventually leads to consumer dissatisfaction and complaints.
Textile Fabric’s ability to retain its original color is one of the most important properties of a textile product. The colorfastness or color retention or appearance is influenced by a number of variables that occur both pre-consumer and post-consumer. Fiber Quality, yarn formation, fabric construction, textile wet processing. Of these variables, the choices made during textile wet processing have the most significant effect on the colorfastness properties. Dye selection is also of the utmost importance.
On the other hand, consumer practices such as Washing Machine, detergent selection and laundering techniques also play a major role in the color retention of a fabric.
The following factors are considered important in the appearance after washing of garments:
- Washing machines and washing programs.
- Use of wash loads consisting of whites and colored.
- Different fiber materials, such as cotton, polyester, nylon etc.
- Low energy program in washing machines low liquor, low temperatures and higher detergent activity.
- Ingredients of detergent formulations.
Below is most common detergent used in the world and all detergent have different formulation and ingredient that also have different characteristics can change the result due to OBA effect, alkaline properties, solubility etc.
Below different brands machine has different main wash time, rinse and final extraction depend on machine manufacturing but some time temperature is same. That also make different result.
Lab technician performance:
We cannot ignore the technician performance and work load that also make the result variations. We need to check the hue test of each and every assessor and also the report reviewer. Technician should have the hue test pass report to do assess. Have the minimum knowledge of fabric manufacturing, construction, dye combination, basic chemistry that are also the extra advantage for him/her.
Customer complain also make a confusion for the test result. As per care label and country of destination product should be go to that particular country and wash as per care label with standard machine. But we found sometime, customer bought a garment from one country and send it to another country to his/her relatives where garments is not washing as per standard and got a confusing result.
You may also like:
- Popular Garment Wash Ideas in Apparel Business
- Improving Comfort Properties of Denim Fabric through Washing Treatment
- Caustic Wash Process with Limitation
- Bio-Stone Washing with Celluloses for Denim
Founder & Editor of Textile Learner. He is a Textile Consultant, Blogger & Entrepreneur. Mr. Kiron is working as a textile consultant in several local and international companies. He is also a contributor of Wikipedia.
