How to mix a very dark brown that is not reddish or purplish

Name: Trina

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Linda Knutson's
Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers

Country or region: USA

Message: Hi Paula,

Your website is amazing. I have scoured it and have found many useful tips. I am trying to get a VERY dark brown. I have tried every Procrion brown dye offered by Dharma and cannot get the right color. They either too pale, way too red or even too purple.

Can you suggest a mix of colors to achieve a dark NON red brown. I dye 4.5 pounds of cotton in a top loading machine.

Other than color mixing, do you have any other tips to get a dark brown? Soak for more time? More salt? Warmer water?

Lastly, if I do the right hue but cannot get the right depth is better to re-dye or add more dye?

If you have a piece now that is a dark reddish brown, and the reddishness is the problem, then you should overdye it with the opposite color from red on the color wheel, which is green. If the brown you have now is too orangish, you can correct it by adding blue. A brown that is too purplish can be corrected by dyeing it yellow. Overdyeing, that is, redyeing a piece you've already completed dyeing once, produces good results. It allows you to get a particularly deep, intense color, which is what you're trying to get, and it's a great way to correct a the hue of a color that you want to be darker. Since you're adding more dye to the existing color, the color you produce will always be darker than what you started with.

If you're starting over again with an undyed piece, then you can try to get a darker color this time by using more dye powder. You can use up to 10% of the original dry weight of the fabric; some people even use as much as 12%. Since your cotton weighs 4.5 pounds, which is about 2000 grams, you could use up to 200 grams of Procion MX dye powder, which is about 7 ounces dry weight, or just use one entire 8-ounce jar of dye. If you start with the same dye mix that produced a reddish brown the first time, then you should substitute green dye for a portion of the dye powder, perhaps one ounce of green dye along with six ounces of the reddish brown. You can mix the dye powder in the proportions you plan to use, and do a quick test in a plastic freezer bag with a small scrap of the fabric you're dyeing, or a similar fabric if you don't have any extra to use.

Warmer water, more time, or more salt can all help in getting a slightly darker color from a given amount of dye, but the real key, assuming you do everything else right, is to just use enough dye powder.

When dyeing in the washing machine, it's important to use a lot of salt, as otherwise the fabric and the dye tend to repel each other, so a lot of the dye ends up wasted. I usually use twenty cups of non-iodized table salt or pickling salt for a full washing machine load. If you use kosher salt, you have to measure out more cups, because each cup of kosher salt weighs less than a cup of granulated salt; the increase in volume of salt needed for two brands of kosher salt is listed on my page "Do I need to use salt, in dyeing?", or you can weigh it out. Ten pounds is a good quantity to use for a full washing machine load.

When I dye in the washing machine, I always go back about ten minutes into the washing cycle to reset the timer to the beginning of the cycle. I like to repeat this for an entire hour. There are some dye recipes that call for less time, but I don't want to risk wasting any of the dye, unless I'm trying for a pale color. As for the temperature, I use warm water, between 105°F and 110°F. If the water as it comes from the water heater into the washing machine is cooler than this, I add some hot water, as well, to reach this temperature range.

For mixing your own colors, I recommend using the basic unmixed single-hue Procion dye colors, since they are the same from one supplier to another. See my page, "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?", to see which dyes these are. Browns are among the most challenging colors to mix, because they contain some of each of the three primary colors (red, yellow and blue). A good way to start is with orange dye, adding blue dye to it as needed, then adding yellow if the resulting mix is too purplish, or green if it's too reddish.

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Posted: Friday - April 27, 2012 at 11:02 AM

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How to mix a very dark brown that is not reddish or purplish

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