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how to get yellow out of white

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Bleaching white clothes seem to turn them yellow. Laundry expert shares why and how to fix it.

"Chlorine bleach is fine if you're cleaning or disinfecting with it but it's really not for laundry anymore."

Why bleach turns white clothes yellow? Here's how to fix it.

Washing laundry often involves taking time to separate things into piles: towels, delicates, colors and whites. Some people only care about separating out the white clothes to keep them looking white as long as possible. But that doesn't always prevent them from looking dingy–enter, bleach.

It has been boasted as a whitening agent for generations, encouraging the use of a capful of the solution to keep whites bright. Except, after using bleach on white clothing, over time instead of clothes continuing to maintain their bright white appearance, they look yellow. It seemingly happens for no reason since bleach whitens everything from grout to teeth to t-shirts. So what's the deal with bleach eventually turning white clothes yellow?

Melissa Pateras, a laundry expert explains why bleach has a yellowing effect and how to reverse it before damage sets in from trying to overcorrect with more bleach.

Church Bleach GIF by Robert E BlackmonGiphy

"Chlorine bleach is fine if you're cleaning or disinfecting with it but it's really not for laundry anymore. It's super old school, your grandma used it because it's all that she had. I don't even keep it in my house because it's corrosive, it smells and it causes damage," Pateras explains.

According to Stanford Health, bleach is an oxidizer and corrosive which is not only an irritant to skin and eyes but can cause damage to certain surfaces. This is why it's advised to dilute bleach before use but if it's harmful to skin, it would be a reasonable expectation for that to extend to clothing.


"You can only use chlorine bleach on whites, it's really easy to overuse it, to spill it, to drip it and it's also super easy to accidentally damage an article of clothing with it. And because bleach stains aren't stains, they're an absence of color, you can't fix that. Chlorine bleach causes yellowing while it weakens and damages the fibers. Whites over time always look yellow and dingy when you use chlorine bleach," the woman says.

Instead of using bleach, Pateras says to use oxygenated bleach like OxyClean or a similar product because they're less harmful and don't damage fabrics. As for the clothes that have already started turning yellow due to the use of bleach, the laundry expert has a quick fix for that. You dye them blue, well kinda.


When someone asks Pateras how to make their yellowed whites perk back up to their intended whiteness, the mom excitedly spills her favorite secret fix.

"This is my favorite question and you have no idea. When you have white fabrics that you've bleached, the bleach is the actual culprit, that's what's making them yellow. So what you need is, believe it or not, is to put a blue tint back into them to make them appear white. You need a bluing liquid and Mrs. Stewart's is my absolute favorite," she shares before adding. "All you need to do is dilute it, follow the instructions, you'll be amazed at the results."

Adding the blue tint makes your whites whiter and brighter, according to Pateras. In a follow up video she explains that you need to put a quarter teaspoon of bluing liquid into a glass container before adding four cups of water to dilute it.


"All you need to do is add it to the final rinse of your wash, so if you have a front loader, you're going to add it to the dispenser. If you have a top loader you're going to add it directly to the drum," Pateras says before sharing that you can use it several times if the whites are really dingy.

Just because your whites are yellowing or looking extra dingy doesn't mean you need all new white clothes, you just need to add a little blue.