Can a black poly/spandex jumpsuit be dyed to a different color?

Name: Trina

—ADVERTISEMENTS—

Dye polyester and poly/cotton blends

Jacquard iDye
and iDye Poly

(cannot be used for spandex or Lycra blends)

iDye Poly is disperse dye that can be used to immersion dye synthetic fibers including polyester, nylon, and acrylic. Note that regular iDye is a direct dye that can be used only on natural fibers such as cotton; it can be mixed with iDye Poly to dye polyester/cotton blends.

Buy from Blick

and help support this web site!

Country or region: USA

Message: I am the mother of the groom. Found this perfect jumpsuit for the occasion, but it's black. It is 96% Poly, 4% Spandex. Can this be dyed to a different color. Can you recommend someone I could send it to and have it done correctly if it can be done. Can you help!

No. I'm sorry to say that polyester/spandex is an undyeable fiber blend. Not even a professional dyer can successfully dye this fiber blend!

Instead, the polyester and the spandex must be dyed before they are blended together when the fabric is made. This is because the high heat required for dyeing polyester is much hotter than the maximum temperature that spandex can tolerate.

In addition, you cannot dye anything that is black another color; since dye is transparent, you cannot see any color you put on top of a darker color.

If your jumpsuit did not contain spandex, you might be able to change it from black to another color by applying a sulfur-based color removing chemical, such as Rit Color Remover or Jacquard Color Remover. However, this process is unpredictable: the black dye in the jumpsuit might change to brown or orange, or it might not change at all, depending on exactly what dye it is. It doesn't matter in this case, though, because all of these color remover products can be used only with very hot water, which will damage spandex.

You can't use chlorine bleach to try to remove the black dye in your jumpsuit, because chlorine bleach destroys lycra. It also damages polyester, producing an ugly dull yellow stain that can't be removed.

There is no way around it. Your polyester/spandex jumpsuit will have to stay black. Perhaps you could get a local seamstress to sew a similar jumpsuit, using fabric that is the right color.

(Please help support this web site. Thank you.)

Posted: Tuesday - February 05, 2013 at 11:02 AM

Follow this blog on twitter here.
Tweet

getBlogName(); > getCategoryName("<$EntryCategoryFolder$>"); >

Can a black poly/spandex jumpsuit be dyed to a different color?

> >