Dozens of you have told us: our raw jeans (the darkest wash) bleed. Sometimes with dramatic consequences, like the time they stained a customer’s sofa (which was beige) ((and didn’t have removable covers)).

That’s right: like almost all jeans, ours are dyed with indigo. And unlike most cotton dyes, which are known as “reactive” dyes and penetrate right to the core of the yarn, indigo is a so-called “pigment” dye that sits on the surface of the yarn without fully soaking in. That’s actually what makes jeans such beautiful garments: the colour is slightly uneven, it develops a patina wherever there’s friction… in short, it’s alive.

The problem is that when you buy jeans in a raw wash (= neither faded at the factory nor washed at home yet), the indigo can sometimes rub off onto whatever they touch: skin, clothes… and sofas.

Our care instructions do warn you to be careful and not to wear them with your spotless white shoes when it’s raining… but that isn’t always enough. And every now and then, you tell us you’re disappointed by how much these raw jeans bleed.

So we asked ourselves two questions:

1. Do our jeans really bleed more than others? (If so, we’ll need to find a new way of doing things with our denim supplier.)
2. How can you limit bleeding in raw jeans?

This article sets out to answer both questions with some home-made tests.

Yes, our jeans bleed, but no more than other brands’ jeans

In fact, when customers tell us their jeans have “bled”, they actually mean one of two things: 1- bleeding in water: when you wash your white t-shirts with your jeans and they come out blue, and 2- colour transfer through rubbing: when you rub your hands on your thighs and they – too – turn blue.

To find out whether our jeans bleed more than others, I soaked jeans from several brands (ours included, obviously) for an hour, stirring each pair for 4 minutes, then compared the colour of the soaking water.

Great news: of the 4 brands of jeans I tested, ours bled the least.

The colour transfer rub test

It’s lovely to see that Loom’s jeans bleed the least, but I’d rather run a second test to be absolutely sure: the rub test. I rubbed each pair by hand with white fabric for exactly 3 minutes, then compared the colour of the fabric.

The result is less glorious than the first test’s: of the 4 pairs tested, the Muji jeans bled the least. Loom’s jeans, on the other hand, bled just as much as two others: the COS and the Levi’s.

So, based on these two tests, there’s nothing to worry about: our jeans do bleed, but no more than other brands’. No reason to change our manufacturing process with our supplier, then (which would be very difficult and extremely costly anyway…).

Our tips to keep your jeans from bleeding

Right, there’s no doubt about it now: our jeans bleed. But are there ways to set the dye better at home? I found plenty of “grandma’s tricks” online: soaking your jeans in a basin of water with vinegar or coarse salt, washing them at a high temperature… But do they really work?

You know me by now: I tested every one of these methods. And since our jeans bleed very little in water, I focused on rub tests for colour transfer. So I cut 6 squares out of our jeans:

1. New denim,
2. New denim washed 3 times at 30°C and air-dried,
3. New denim soaked overnight in water and vinegar, rinsed the next day and air-dried,
4. New denim soaked overnight in salt water, rinsed the next day and air-dried,
5. New denim soaked overnight in salt water + vinegar, rinsed the next day and air-dried,
6. New denim washed 3 times at 60°C and air-dried.

To improve my rub test, I had the idea of using my electric sander with white fabric in place of the sandpaper, and “sanding” each square for 3 minutes. This upgraded method has two advantages: the results are much more marked, and it’s kinder to my wrist.

The verdict is clear: the best trick to stop your jeans bleeding is to wash them 3 times at 60°C (6). The denim soaked overnight in salt water (4) also gives very good results, followed by the denim washed 3 times at 30°C (2). On the other hand, the squares soaked overnight in vinegar water, with or without salt (3 and 5), show nothing conclusive: they bleed just as much as the new denim (1).

Conclusion

So the most effective way to limit colour transfer through rubbing is to wash your jeans 3 times at 60°C. But that’s not at all what I’ve chosen to recommend, because 1- it will fade your jeans considerably (they’ll lose their lovely raw colour) and 2- they could shrink in the washing machine.

The denim washed 3 times at 60°C (square 6, on the right) faded the most. The denim washed 3 times at 30°C (square 2) faded only slightly compared with the new denim (square 1). The squares soaked in vinegar and/or salt water didn’t fade at all. In fact, if you’re going to wash your jeans 3 times at 60°C, you might as well buy stone-wash jeans (= already faded at the factory) in the first place! It comes to much the same thing, with far less hassle.

So if you want to set the dye better AND keep your jeans a lovely raw colour, I recommend the salt water method: leave your new jeans to soak overnight in a basin of lukewarm water with a glass of coarse salt dissolved in it (salt helps fix the colour). Then wash them at 30°C with other dark clothes and let them air-dry.

But it will never work miracles: raw jeans, whatever the brand, will bleed the first few times you wear them. So until you’ve washed them at least three times, avoid wearing white sneakers or sitting on a light-coloured sofa.

And if you’d rather not worry about any of this, I’d suggest going for jeans that have already been faded at the factory, like the stone (a slightly lighter wash than raw) or the bleached (a much paler wash), as they bleed far less.

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Banner photo credit: Michaela, at home in Germany.

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Who am I to give you advice on caring for your clothes?

My name is Claire, and I keep track of production at Loom. Basically, I try to keep things from going out of stock on our site (it’s not perfect yet, but I’m working on it), and I make sure at every stage of manufacturing that our clothes meet our quality standards.
On top of that, I’m passionate about anything that helps our clothes last longer: care, repairs and good old grandma’s tricks. I love giving clothes “a little extra soul”: reworking them, mending them, giving them another chance when nobody wants them any more. On these pages, I’ll try to pass on whatever I know that might come in handy.
One last thing: I’ve genuinely tried every tip you’ll find on this site and checked for myself that it works (in other words, it’s not just copied and pasted from a quick internet search). If you have new ones to suggest, feel free to leave a comment below this article.