Revamp Your Clothes With These Awesome Bleach Dye Techniques

4 Materials
$5
20 Minutes
Easy


Raise your hand if tie-dye day was your favorite day at summer camp! Well, guess what! It’s time to bring our childhood into adult life. I mean, bleach is an adult product, right? So grab some old clothes that you’re ready to revamp and some bleach and follow along as I show you three different methods I tried out for bleach dyeing clothes.

Tools and Materials:

  • Clothes
  • Rubber bands
  • Bleach
  • Sponge brush
DIY bleach dye techniques
Scrunch and splash method


The first method I tried was SO easy. I took a pajama set that I had previously made and scrunched them into balls, tying rubber bands all over them. Then I simply placed them in the bathtub and splashed some bleach mixture (75% bleach, 25% water) onto different parts of the clothes. All that was left to do was wait a bit for it to change color, then throw them in the wash! 

Easy bleach dye technique
Sponge brush method




For this method, all I did was take a pair of pants I wanted to bleach dye and laid them out on the floor. Then I dipped a foam paintbrush, into a solution of pure bleach and used the brush to make the design I wanted. I left it for a bit, and when it started changing colors I added it to the wash as well.

How to bleach dye clothing
Use a stick



Spoiler alert: this one was a total fail for me. Turns out that some fabrics aren’t affected by bleach, and this sweatshirt had polyester in it so literally nothing happened. BUT the method is still cool so I’ll explain it to you. Basically what you do is take a stick and tie it to your garment with rubber bands. For smaller garments you can use popsicle sticks, but since this was a bigger sweatshirt I used a huge piece of wood I found and broke it down into multiple pieces. Then I folded the sweatshirt, putting a stick in between each layer. When I had multiple layers, I tied it together with rubber bands. Once you see discoloration (which I didn’t....oops) you throw it in the wash.

DIY bleach dye pajamas


DIY bleach dye pants


That was it! I seriously had so much fun doing this. I’m obsessed with the way they came out, and even started selling pants like these. I loved trying out all the different methods and seeing how different techniques worked with different types of clothing. A little sad that the sweatshirt didn’t work, but I’ll just have to try that technique out on something else instead. Did that technique or any of the other ones work for you? I want to see! Drop it in the comments. 

Suggested materials:
  • Clothes
  • Rubber bands
  • Bleach
See all materials

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Comments
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2 of 4 comments
  • Julie Julie on Dec 05, 2020

    I did something like this. But I put bleach and water in a spray bottle and made a pattern out of cardboard , Put the pattern on top of a t-shirt and sprayed it with the bleach. when I removed the pattern of course it didn't have any bleach there..... It was fun and different to do with my kid.

  • Kat12065209 Kat12065209 on Feb 05, 2021

    Try playing with a bleach pen on fabric. Draw a design, wait a few minutes and rinse immediately, toss in wash alone. Results are awesome!

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