My studio can get very hot. Will temperatures of 100 degrees harm my Tinfix dyes?

Name: Joanna

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Message: My studio can get very hot. Will temperatures of 100 degrees harm my Tinfix dyes? Did look for this on your site and could not find an answer. Thanks.

While the MSDS for Tinfix Design Silk Dye [PDF] says "Stable under normal storage condition" and "Avoid heat", I think your dyes should probably stay good at least in the short term.

Tinfix dyes are one of several available brands referred to collectively as the French Silk Dyes, which seem to be mostly composed of acid dyes or basic dyes, along with various chemical solvents such as ethanol. (It's not easy to know what types of dyes are in them, because the manufacturers are extremely secretive about which dye chemicals they use.) Although reactive dyes, such as Procion MX dyes, will go bad after a couple of years and go bad more quickly when stored in a hot place, acid dyes and basic dyes, since they have no reactive group to go bad, are more resistant to heat damage and will probably stay good for many years as long as no evaporation of the solvent occurs. Even Procion MX dyes can still function well as acid dyes, when used with acid on a protein fiber, long after they have lost their reactivity and can no longer be used on cotton.

Letting the dyes get really hot, near a heater for example, could be hazardous because of the flammable solvents, but that's very different from your studio temperature around 100°F.

What's surprisingly more important than avoiding a hot studio is avoiding an extremely cold one. The MSDS for Tinfex Dye Thinner says not to store it below 10°C, that is, 50°F. I would guess that low temperatures, as long as they do not get as low as freezing, would be a problem only because most dyes are less soluble when cold than when they are at room temperature.

It would be a good idea, whenever you have not used your dyes for a while, to do a small test from each bottle, to make sure they're still working fine. Use a small scrap of the same material that you are painting on, and steam it to fix. Problems are more likely to occur in the consistency of the dye mixture than in how well it steams.

Always be careful to keep all French silk dyes, and everything you have painted with them, out of direct sunlight, and store them in the dark whenever possible. They are noted for being susceptible to light damage, probably because some of them contain basic dyes (also known as cationic dyes). Basic dyes are notoriously poorly lightfast, and can lose their brightness quickly when exposed to bright light. This is true not only of ultraviolet light, but also of ordinary visible light.

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