Apparel Search — Decoration & Finishing Processes
Dyes from plants, minerals and insects: the classic natural colorants, mordants and the suppliers who sell them.
Natural dyes are a class of colorants extracted from vegetative matter and animal residues.
Historically, natural dyes were used to color clothing or other textiles, and by the mid-1800's chemists began producing synthetic substitutes for them. By the early part of this century only a small percentage of textile dyes were extracted from plants. Lately there has been increasing interest in natural dyes, as the public becomes aware of ecological and environmental problems related to the use of synthetic dyes. Use of natural dyes cuts down significantly on the amount of toxic effluent resulting from the synthetic dye process.
Natural dyes generally require a mordant, which are metallic salts of aluminum, iron, chromium, copper and others, for ensuring the reasonable fastness of the color to sunlight and washing. Customers who have become accustomed to the dazzling colors and wash and light fastness of synthetic dyes are hard to convince, as only a few of the natural dyes have good all round fastness.
Quality standards for natural dyes vary widely, so it is necessary to first contact an importer to find out what they are looking for. The problem arises with standardization of the colors as no two dye lots are identical. While paint manufacturers might be interested in the uniqueness of each batch of color produced, technicians in the pharmacology, food and textile industry loathe this lack of consistency.
This latter group has attempted to standardize natural dyes by imposing a color index that attempts to classify and name them. Each dye is thus named according to the following pattern:
These dyes are thereby specifically identified as dyes of the stated color, but it does not specify whether the dyes are derived from animals or plants. This is because it is a classification based on the dye's source and color, and it contains no chemical information, nor does it imply that dyes with similar names but unique numbers are in any way related. It also gives no information about the mechanism by which staining occurs. This is done in order to authenticate the synthesized organic dyes along with natural dyes under the same universal classification system.
In Brief
Dyes and textile chemicals decide a garment's color, hand-feel and performance — from the scouring bath that prepares the fabric to the finish that makes it repel water, resist stains or block the sun.
Step 01 / The Directory
Natural dyes are a class of colorants extracted from vegetative matter and animal residues. They can be broken down into the following categories: Weld, Quercitron, Fustic, Osage, Chamomile, Tesu, Dolu, Marigold, Cutch Vegetable Tannins: gallotannins, ellagitannins and catechol tannins Wattle, Myrobalan, Pomegranate, Sumach, Chestnut, Eucalyptus
Common Questions
Natural dyes come from plants, minerals and insects — indigo, madder and cochineal are the classics — and usually need a mordant to bond to the fiber. Synthetic dyes, developed from the 1850s onward, offer a wider, more repeatable color range and are matched to specific fiber types.
A mordant is a substance — alum and iron are the common ones — that helps a natural dye bond to the fiber so the color lasts. The choice of mordant can also shift the shade: iron 'saddens' colors toward grey and brown tones.
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