Do you love the comfort of your jeans but wish they had a slightly different color? We’ve all been in this situation and it is no piece of cake to change your jeans’ color.
While jeans give us a stylish look and make-up for comfortable casual clothing, sometimes the colors just don’t work out for you and that is when you wonder if you could fade the color of the jeans.
You’ll be astonished to know that yes, you can fade the color of your jeans! You have to no longer put style over comfort because now you can have both with the help of some useful cleaning agents such as hydrogen peroxide
Hydrogen peroxide is a powerful oxidizing agent that is widely used for disinfecting and household cleaning. This compound acts by producing unstable OH radicals that enable it to have a multifaceted usage.
Surprisingly, this agent can also effectively fade your jeans’ color and change it according to your liking.
How to Fade Jeans Color — DIY Guides
When it comes to fading jean colors, you can do it yourself quite easily.
There are some great agents that can help you in this situation and if they are used right, then they can fade the color of your jeans fast and make them ideal for your everyday use!
#1 How to Fade Jeans Color Using Hydrogen Peroxide
Hydrogen peroxide contains one extra oxygen than water and that is what enables it to be an extraordinary oxidizing agent.
Peroxide would fade your jeans’ color by oxidizing the dye particles and allowing these firmly bound particles to dissociate from the microfibers of your jeans.
Remember that hydrogen peroxide gives your clothes a white fade and overall lightens the bluish-grey hue of the jean.
Hydrogen peroxide is a mild bleaching agent and may be used to achieve lighter degrees of differentiation of more or less similar shades. Due to the strong oxidizing powers, hydrogen peroxide may just be the perfect agent for you to fade the color of your jeans.
What You Need
- Hydrogen Peroxide
- Water
- Bucket
How To Use
- Start by filling the bucket with cool water
- Now add in two cups of hydrogen peroxide
- Soak the jeans in the solution of hydrogen peroxide and water
- Allow it to soak for around 15-30 minutes
- Now take out your jeans to see if the color is faded enough for you
- Wash the jeans to clear the hydrogen peroxide from it
- Let your jeans dry and add them to your closet
Keep These Things In Mind!
- Hydrogen peroxide may damage the fibers of your jeans due to its oxidizing properties, and this in turn could result in your jeans losing elasticity.
- While a 3% concentration solution of hydrogen peroxide is ideal for this use, you can use a more concentrated solution but you should take appropriate measures such as wearing gloves while using it
- Use this method in an open area or a near a window to let the fumes escape in case they arise
#2 How to Fade Jeans Color Using Epsom Salt
Epsom salt can be one other way to fade the color of your jeans but please note that it will take a lot of time and some considerable effort to achieve the desired results through this method.
Salt works by abrading the surface and that loosens the superficially lying blue-dyed fibers and exposes the white underneath it.
Using Epsom salt for fading your jean colors could help you achieve your desired look in the most cost-effective and efficient way possible. Are you still interested to understand how this method can help you? Let’s start right away!
What You Need
- Epsom Salt
- Water
- Bucket
How To Use
- Fill up the bucket with water
- Add around 2 cups of Epsom salt to the water
- Soak your jeans in this solution
- Let your jeans soak in for around 2-3 days
- Take your jeans out of the bucket and throw them in the washing machine
- Run it through your normal washing cycle
- Dry your jeans well and see the results!
Keep These Things In Mind!
- When you submerge your jeans in the salt and water solution, you need to stir regularly and as briskly as possible. This vigorous mixing is absolutely necessary for this method to be effective because it would allow the salt to mix in the water. Ideally, you should be mixing the entire solution once an hour, and you would see great results in no time!
- If this method doesn’t fade your jeans’ color as much as you desired, you can repeat this process or use hydrogen peroxide as an after-treatment.
#3 How to Fade Jeans Color With Lemon Juice
Ever heard about lemon juice fading the color of jeans?
Well, it’s true. Lemon works as an excellent color fading agent because it contains citric acid which polarizes the dyes they eventually lose their ability to lose color.
This in turn causes your jeans to fade and give you desirable results when you use this method.
The best part about this method is that lemon juice is an inorganic substance and it won’t cause excessive bleaching nor would it cause any damage to the microfibers of your jeans.
As if this weren’t, enough, the cost-effectiveness of this method just adds to the convenient usability of this method to fade color from jeans.
What You Need
- Lemon Juice
- Water
- Bucket
How To Use
- Fill the bucket up with water
- Submerge your jeans in the water
- Take your jeans out and remove excess water from them
- Now drain this water and fill up the bucket with just enough lemon juice to submerge the jeans
- Soak your damp jeans in the lemon juice
- Let them stay there for a while but keep checking on them every 5-10 minutes
- When you think the jeans have achieved the desired color, take them out and throw them in the washing machine
- Run them through the normal washing cycle and then let them dry
Keep These Things In Mind!
- Don’t expect instant results because this would not act fast like bleach. It would take some time for the lemon juice to do its magic
- You should buy the lemon juice from the market because you simply can’t squeeze enough lemons to fill a bucket to submerge your jeans in it
- After the washing cycle, you will most probably see a little bit more color faded away, so be prepared for that beforehand
#4 Using Sandpaper to Fade Jeans Color
Do you know what’s similar about all of these methods mentioned above? You don’t get to choose the areas you want to fade more or less color off of and the sandpaper method would allow you to do exactly that.
Through this method, you will get a very stylish, personalized look and that would make your jeans look even better.
One downside to this method is that through this method, the fibers of your jeans may get damaged and lose their elasticity.
They will not last as long but it all comes down to whether you find the stylized look to be worth it or not. A 180 grit paper or pumice stone would be perfect to give basic results but if you require more intense results, you can use grittier sandpaper.
What You Need
- 180 grit sandpaper
- Small piece of cardboard
How To Use
- Before you start with the sandpaper, you should arrange and set up the jeans beforehand. If you plan to apply sandpaper on the thigh areas, then you should place cardboard inside the exact area in order to not sand the back of the thighs.
- Now is the time to start scraping the sandpaper. You should start by scraping lightly and see if you like how the color is turning out to be. Usually, in black pants, you will find a grey fade mark
- Run the jeans through the washing machine to rinse away any clinging dye.
- Let your jeans dry and check out the final results!
Keep These Things In Mind!
- You should wear protective outdoor work gloves while using this method because you can accidentally sand your own finger and that is excruciating
- To maximize the results, you should experiment and try using different strokes with varying pressures
- Be careful while using this method because applying sandpaper excessively on the jeans might fade more color than you wanted and leave you worse off than you started with
How To Fade Jeans In A Front Load Washer?
To achieve maximum results in a short time, you should use bleach in your front load washer to fade the color from your jeans. Bleaching your jeans would be the perfect way to soften them and fade the color and it would also give your jeans a more stylish look.
One downside of using bleaching is that it has the potential to damage the fibers of the jeans if they are left for longer periods of time.
Therefore, you would have to heed caution while using this method. One important thing to note is that chlorine bleach does not result in a white fade but rather a weird yellow fade that may or may not be very apparent.
Using oxygen bleach might be a safer alternative but it may not yield results as efficiently as the chlorine bleach but at least it won’t leave yellow fade marks on your jeans and would not damage the fibers of the cloth as much.
Here is how you can use bleach to fade the color of your jeans in a front load washer:
- Fill up the washing machine with water, preferably warm
- Add bleach to the washing machine
- Soak your jeans in the washing machine for about 20 to 40 minutes and be extremely cautious in this step because over-exposure can damage the jeans and might fade more color than you desired
- Now drain your washing machine and make sure that all the bleach is gone
- Run your jeans through the normal washing cycle after adding in a fabric softener
- Now let your jeans dry and see what your efforts have yielded
Using bleach can be dangerous since it is extremely reactive and it can damage your skin and eyes if exposed to it. It is advised that you do not use bleach in this method through a spray bottle and you should keep the bleach bottle in a safe place and away from reach.
How Does Fading Jeans Color Work?
Usually, the blueish-hued jeans that you wear are made up of indigo dyes and they eventually fade with time just because of long-term wear.
Your jeans are made up of two types of fibers and the deep ones are left white while the superficial ones are dyed blue with indigo dye and are interlaced together.
Whatever chemical agents that you use to fade the color from your jeans, eventually oxidize or destroy this indigo dye that reveals the underlying plain white fibers and give the jeans a bleached, whitened look.
There are various methods to use depending on the type of fibers your jeans are made up of, so you should read up on the most appropriate ones for your jeans before treating them.
Physical vs Chemical Lightening
Physical lightening would include the usage of material such as sandpaper that help you get control of the specific areas that you want to fade.
This method may take a longer time and it can damage the fibers of the jeans, but if used with caution, it can bring the most ideal results for you.
Chemical lightening is different from physical lightening because it can fade the colors more efficiently since the mechanisms of these fading agents allow them to work on a molecular level and bring about the change through oxidizing the dyes.
Both methods are very effective but it all depends on what you’re looking for and if the end product is able to deliver you the desired results.
Will Fading Jeans Color Damage My Jeans?
This entirely depends on the type of chemical agent you’re using to fade your jeans.
Strong bleaching agents such as chlorine bleach will most evidently damage the fibers of your jeans and reduce their elasticity and overall usability to a considerable extent. Similarly, sandpaper also has the potential to damage the fibers of your clothes.
However, agents such as hydrogen peroxide that have strong oxidizing properties and mild bleaching properties make up the perfect agents to fade your jeans. They don’t destroy the material of your jeans and fade them in a manner as mild as possible.
Moreover, you can use hydrogen peroxide to clean stains and remove any smells from your jeans.
The Takeaway
Fading color from jeans is inevitable, but sometimes the color may not seem right and if you want to make it lighter, you can fade it through any of the methods mentioned above.
However, the most ideal method with effective results and the least amount of damage is the usage of hydrogen peroxide
Hydrogen peroxide would fade your jeans and give you desirable results in no time. Due to its oxidizing and bleaching properties, hydrogen peroxide has become one of the best cleaning agents of all time.
Do you want to try it yourself? Order your set now!
