Laundry can be confusing. You can sort by color, fabric, or soil level, but which one takes priority, as some clothes could fit into more than one pile? With the drive to wash everything at cooler temperatures, how can you even be sure that your clothes are properly clean?
The fact is clothes are complicated. Separating laundry by color is one category you can use on wash day—but there are others. Washing machines have different programs for a reason.
Our quick read aims to demystify laundry separation and why you need to do it so you can wash with confidence.
Does Laundry Need To Be Sorted by Color?
You can get away with mixing dark and light-colored garments in your wash, even at hotter temperatures. Nowadays, modern manufacturing and dye processes ensure more garments are more color-fast than in previous years.
However, even if the colors don’t bleed, pastel and white items can lose their brightness over time at cooler temperatures.
What About Different Fabrics?
Another reason to avoid mixing colors in the wash is to launder according to an item’s required temperature. Fabrics vary. Whites often need a hotter wash than colors. Cool water is generally preferable for colors, although the garment’s care label should always guide you.
What Happens if You Don’t Separate Laundry?
If you don’t separate laundry and just lump it all together, some items will inevitably wash at the wrong temperature, affecting not just color but also hygiene and longevity.
Consistently washing garments in too hot or cold programs will reduce their lifespan and affect the fabric’s feel and appearance.
You’ll also run the risk of a color bleed with new or heavily dyed garments.
Clothing like sportswear, underwear, or work clothing typically needs a hotter wash to ensure sanitization and cleanliness. A cool wash might benefit colors but will do nothing for a sweaty sports kit or infected items like towels or bed linen.
Hot water kills bacteria and germs and helps disinfect fabric so it emerges clean and fresh-smelling.
If you can’t be bothered to separate your laundry by color, then a cold-water wash cycle is a safer option. It will limit any potential color transfer, although your whites will eventually look dingy and lose their brightness.
Avoid throwing in new dark-colored garments, as they’re much more likely to bleed.
How to Separate Laundry Properly
Colors? Fabric? Don’t these all contradict each other when choosing a wash cycle? Here’s how to correctly separate laundry so your garments are cared for by color, fabric, and purpose.
Start by Reading the Care Label
The priority with any item is to wash it according to the instructions on the care label. You might be surprised at what it says!
A care label reveals the manufacturer’s recommended washing temperature, machine cycle, and drying method. The Federal Trade Commission tightly regulates care labels in the USA.
If a label says special care, dry clean the garment. Some hand-wash-only items can go through the machine, but choose a program reserved for wool or delicates.
Sort by Color
After you’ve removed items that are dry clean-only, it’s time to sort by color.
Put whites and pastel-colored fabrics in a separate pile. Then, combine dark fabrics like red, black, navy blue, dark gray, and brown. Now, you should have two laundry piles.
Sort by Fabric Type
Place delicates like lingerie and silk garments into a separate pile. Put together work clothes and other hard-working items. Synthetic fabrics should stay together, and then separate cottons and blended materials.
Wash delicates separately and in a mesh laundry bag to protect the fabric from snagging in the machine. The care label will recommend a cool wash, but if you’re worried about hygiene, laundry detergent sheets can take care of that.
Our laundry detergent sheets are free of harmful chemicals such as phosphates, brighteners, parabens, dyes, and 1,4-dioxane that damage delicate items. They’re designed to clean well at low temperatures and reduce plastic waste. At Freddie, our commitment is to minimize environmental impact compared to traditional liquid detergents in plastic bottles while keeping your clothes fresh.
Always separate towels and washcloths from polyester mixed garments to reduce pilling.
Isolate Heavily Soiled Items
The final division is for work clothes or sweaty sportswear. You might think this is to wash at a hotter temperature, but separating soiled clothing avoids transferring dirt and grime onto lightly soiled garments. Don’t share dirt with cleaner laundry!
Our laundry sheets are designed to clean at lower temperatures and help reduce odors, even on grimy and heavily soiled garments.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Colors Should Not Be Washed Together?
Avoid mixing very dark garments with light-colored items and linens. Even if the dark colors don’t obviously bleed, there will be some low-grade seepage over time, so your whites and pastels deteriorate into dingy or off-shade colors. Always take care with new dark-colored items as they’re much more likely to leak dye than older garments.
Do You Have To Separate Laundry in Cold Water Cycles?
Not necessarily. In a cold water cycle, colors are unlikely to bleed, so the only items you’ll want to protect in a cold wash are delicates like lace, silk, and satin. These garments can go in a cold wash with other fabrics, but a mesh bag should be used to protect them from snagging on buttons or metal fasteners.
Is It Okay To Dry Different Colored Clothes Together?
No, because you can still transfer color during the drying process. The best principle to follow is to keep the separation you’ve used for washing. Heavy or dense fabrics take longer to dry; if they’re left in with lighter fabrics, they’ll overdry, shortening the garment's lifespan.
Final Thoughts
People’s laundry habits are usually inherited so you may find that you end up sorting laundry (or not!) just like you saw your mom do when you were a kid. But things have changed.
Environmental concerns are driving us all to wash at cooler temperatures. Next-generation products mean that cleanliness and hygiene don’t have to involve toxic chemicals that harm the planet.
Freddie laundry detergent sheets are formulated to help reduce odors, support cleanliness, and protect dark colors, so you won’t have to worry. Our formula targets stains and is developed to handle everyday dirt and odor. Plus, we’ve thought of everything, even down to the packaging.
