Posted on 08/21/2025 12:51:56 PM PDT by Red Badger
This time and temperature keeps fabrics strong and prevents premature aging.
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
* Procter & Gamble funded a study of wash cycle length that found colder and shorter is better for clothes.
* Fabric dye density and lifespan is separate from issues like germs and bacteria in the wash.
* Cold, short washes reduced shed microfibers and transferred dyes.
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Scientists from the University of Leeds—and, it should be mentioned, Procter & Gamble—say the best way to keep clothes looking fresh for as long as possible is to use the coldest, shortest wash cycle.
The detergent manufacturer joined with lead author and design school instructor Lucy Cotton (yes) on a study of the way machine washing causes fabrics to spray microfibers. These lost fibers can cause premature garment aging and weaken fabrics.
In the published paper, researchers used dozens of t-shirts from a specific U.K. activewear seller representing a handful of brands like Gildan, Russell, and Hanes. Scientists ran washing machines empty at first to ensure no ridealong microfibers were inside, then collected water from the entire cycle to make sure all newly released microfibers were captured.
The resulting wash water was evaporated, dried completely, and then weighed. The scientists measured dye hold and transfer using swatches of “receiver” fabric in each load, with their color gauged before and after the wash.
After a battery of tests with different colors and materials of t-shirts at different wash temperatures and cycle lengths, the results were clear. From the study:
“[T]here is significantly greater colour loss observed for the 40 °C Cotton Short (85 min) cycle in comparison with the Cold Express (30 min) cycle. These observations provide evidence that in a ‘real’ situation increases in washing time and washing temperature increase colour loss over repeated laundering.” The scientists also measured how much dye changed from darker colors to lighter ones, which is what leads to greying t-shirts and dimming of colors on bright prints, for example.
“Considering the effect of colour transfer over repeated laundering, it was observed that for most white receiver fabrics, significantly greater colour transfer to the tracer fabrics was observed for the 40 °C Cotton Short (85 min) cycle in comparison with the Cold Express (30 min) cycle. These observations provide evidence that, in a ‘real’ situation, increases in washing time and washing temperature increase dye transfer.”
When it came to microfibers, the same relationship bore out: higher temperature and longer time meant more microfibers, whether the fabric of the t-shirt was cotton or a polyester blend. And the release of these fibers never let up.
“What is also evidenced is that on the eighth and [16th] wash that significant numbers of microfibres are still being released from the fabrics, suggesting that there is a consistent mechanism of microfibre generation and release throughout the life of the fabrics,” the researchers wrote.
These researchers conclude that the best wash cycle is a modified Leviathan: gentler, colder, and shorter. By reducing time and temperature, they say, we can reduce the amount of microfiber pollution released into the general water cycle, the amount of waste soap, and the carbon footprint of our washer activity.
Teaming with Procter & Gamble, which released its first cold-water detergent to much ballyhoo in 2005, is a canny financial move. P&G funded the research and added its two cents about its advanced detergents in the press release. But the research appears in Dyes & Pigments, a peer-reviewed journal, and constituted Cotton’s Ph.D. project—regardless of the corporate cold water.
Got to be a place of equilibrium of minimal damage to the clothes and maximum clean clothes.
My thought is what reason would the cabal have to make us think it’s better to wash clothes in cold water. I have an idea or two.
The truth is probably the opposite.
And the more heat the better for germs and bacteria - and soiling.
SOAK because agitation wears fabric. Cold is fine for a quick freshening, but warm to hot cleans better.
Maybe it’s because warmer water is better for getting out the carcinogens and other toxins put into fabric by China.
Except in the winter, our well water is about 50.
I use the warm cycle.
Longer lasting cloths? No thanks.
I’m still wearing jeans and T-shirts that I bought in the 1990s. I wish they’d wear out so I would have to go shopping.;-)
Remember this 2016 ad
From AI:
A commercial for Qiaobi laundry detergent showed a Chinese woman putting laundry into a machine, then a Black man with paint splatters appearing. She stuffs the detergent into his mouth, shoves him into the washing machine, and then a clean, fair-skinned Asian man emerges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcBFCo8gKU
My wife swears most wear comes from drying. She dries on low and hangs to finish.
Of course, we live in a desert where a wet pair of blue jeans will dry in 30 minutes.
Fine. THIS “study” examined T-shirts. And, more importantly, “fiber-loss from the T-Shirts while washing many times in either hot or cold water.
Great. Washing cotton clothes in hotter water continually caused fiber loss over time. (Fibre-loss actually - this was a British study after all.)
What about “dirt loss”? Is not “removing dirt” more important than “minimizing loss of cotton micro-fibres” ? Yes. My hot-washed cotton handkerchiefs and socks do lose mass over time. And, after 4 - 5 years, they are regularly replaced.
When I was a kid, we washed clothes in HOT BOILING WATER from a cast iron pot in the middle of the back yard. The water came from rain barrels, drums actually, under the eaves of the house. Then hand wrong (the wringer was broken) and put on a clothesline. Laundry was an all day affair.............
In old days England used to have a cohort of good scientists.
Now, it’s clear what English scientists are doing...
OK so your cloths will last longer, but sport ground-in dirt and bacteria - a greenies delight.
Clothes are one thing. Towels, bedsheets, undergarments go in hot water for a longer cycle. Probably the reason why the bedbugs that 3rd world countries reintroduced to the USA since Obama’s regime are hard to get rid of.
Yep.
Like I said, what I was taught still seems to hold true. Colored clothes in cold water.
I'll keep washing my whites in hot, along with bleach for keeping them white.
My thought is what reason would the cabal have to make us think it’s better to wash clothes in cold water. I have an idea or two.
The truth is probably the opposite.
To curtail our use of energy, mainly gas, until they can nationalize electricity usage?
Try being married to someone in the trades...
It seems obvious that cold, short cycles will reduce wear and tear on clothes. It also seems obvious that it will result in less effective cleaning of those clothes.
"found colder and shorter is better for clothes"
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