Name: Najah

Message: I'd like to try and dye a white polyester dress into ivory or camel. I know that poly doesn't take well to dying, but I'd really like to try. What natural ingredients can I use, and how should I do it? You're expertise is greatly appreciated.

You will need to boil a polyester dress for an hour or more to get it to take any dye. Is the dress up to this kind of abuse? Not if it is labeled "dry clean only" or "wash in warm water". Even hot water is generally below 140°F, far below the 212°F of boiling water. The dress might survive this treatment, though.

As a general rule, polyester dyes very poorly with natural dyes. It is chemically very much unlike any natural fiber. Natural dyes almost always perform very poorly compared to synthetic dyes, but even most synthetic dyes will not work on polyester. You cannot dye polyester with any ordinary dye, only a special kind of dye called disperse dye. (All-purpose dye, such as Rit®, will not work on polyester, and neither will the fiber reactive dyes that work so well on cotton and other cellulose fibers.)

What you can try is boiling your dress in very strong coffee. It will only take a light tan color if you do so, but that happens to be your goal in this case, so it's doable. Unfortunately, since nylon takes dye much better than polyester, any nylon trim will, take on a distinctly brown shade that contrasts oddly with the beige of the coffee-dyed polyester. However, most clothing is sewn together with polyester thread, so the stitching will probably match the fabric rather well.

One thing I cannot tell you is how to get rid of the strong coffee smell that the dress will also take on. Letting it air out for a year in a well-ventilated area will probably do it. Any washing that removes the smell will probably also remove much of the coffee color.

You could also experiment with extensively boiling your dress with walnut husks instead of coffee. I do not know if this will work, but it might, since coffee does.

As a rule, natural dyes on polyester will be much less resistant to fading in the laundry than the disperse dyes made for use on polyester would be.


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