How to Reverse Tie Dye

Reverse tie dyeing is a fun twist on traditional tie dye. Instead of adding color to a white t shirt you remove the color from a dark t shirt with bleach. Reverse tie dye can be done in all sorts of patterns and kids will love to try this new way of decorating clothing. There are many reverse tie dye techniques to try and you can even make patterns with bleach pens for more embellishments.

How To Reverse Tie Dye

I think that has happened to everyone at some point: You are cleaning or doing some laundry when suddenly you look down and notice a big bleach mark on your clothing.

Unlike stains you can’t try to rinse off the mark or use stain remover to quickly get rid of it. The damage is done. Normally I would cry a little on the inside and assign this article of clothing to be used as house cleaning or hair dyeing only attire.

I decided this time to just go with it and have some fun. Which brings us to today’s tutorial: Reverse Tie Dyeing. Instead of using dye to add color to parts of the garment you use bleach to remove color.

Take your shirt and tie elastic bands around it. I used hair elastics because I didn’t have rubber bands and it worked fine. I just grabbed parts of the shirt and twisted the ties as tight as I could. Then I used dental floss and wound around the whole thing to make it extra tight.

Fill a bowl with water and add a half cup of bleach. Toss in the tied up shirt and swish it around to make sure the bleach water saturates the whole thing. Leave for about 20 minutes and then pour out the water.

Any colored t-shirt will work, but keep in mind that the bleach might not turn it the color you expected! Red will usually turn pink, sometimes white.
Orange most often ends up a lighter shade of orange. Yellow will usually turn white.

The color will be removed from the garment and the bleach water will absorb it

How Long Does it Take to Bleach Dye a T-Shirt?

Take a cap full of full strength bleach and sprinkle it on the balled up shirt. Leave for about another 20 minutes and do some chores while you wait.

Rinse under water and then remove the elastics, then rinse again. Wash alone in the clothes washer, dry as usual.

The results:

Sashaying in the living room

Front and back views

Pretty funky eh? I’m not used to wearing clothes with any kind of pattern. I usually stick to solid colors with no logos.  It was really hard to take photos of myself when I was home alone rushing before heading off to work so sorry for the headless snapshot 🙂

You may also like: Homemade Bleach Recipe

I would like to try this on a top that is maybe blue or another bright color. Black bleached out turns brownish- orange. This was a fun and clever experiment and kids would probably like to try this technique out too (with help from a grown up).

Bleach Dye Techniques:

DIY Bleach Tie Dye Jeans

1. You will need a pair of jeans, rubber bands, bleach, rubber gloves and a bucket.
2. Fill up your bucket with cold water and place the jeans in it.
3. Ring them out.
4. Tie as many or as little rubber bands as you want onto your jeans.
5. Fill your bucket again with water and add half a bottle of bleach.
6. Using your rubber gloves place your jeans into water.
7. Let the jeans sit in the bleach water for 8-10 minutes
8. Rise off the jeans and wash and dry like usual in the washing machine

You may also like: How to Tie Dye with Ice Cubes

Spray Bleach Tie Dye

In addition to submerging the clothing in bleach water you can also fill a spray bottle with bleach water and spray the fabric.

You can make some interesting patterns just from the sprayed bleach or you can place something on the fabric to block part of the bleach from lightening the shirt.

Lace can be placed over the fabric and bleach sprayed over it to make an interesting lace pattern on black fabric. You could also cut a picture out of cardboard of a simple shape or animal and spray over the cardboard making a silhouette on the fabric.

Splatter Reverse Tie Dye

Similar to the spray bleach method, you can dip a paint brush in bleach and flick the bleach onto the fabric. It will have a splatter effect on the clothing. If you decide to do this make sure you use extreme caution and use eye protection and do this outside where no one could accidentally get splashed with the bleach.

Bleach Pen Patterns

Use a bleach pen from the laundry department of the grocery store to draw patterns on dark clothing. Once the pattern has lightened to your desire you can simply wash the bleach off.

You can draw on articles of clothing that you already have reverse tie dyed to add some designs or simply write a quote or shape with the bleach.

Make your own bleach pen by mixing bleach with the following supplies

1. One cup of cold water
2. Five tablespoons of cornstarch
3. Five tablespoons of liquid bleach

Mix the ingredients together and put them in a squeeze bottle or old school glue bottle.

How to Galaxy Dye A T-Shirt

Choose any of the methods above to reverse tie dye your article of clothing with bleach.

After you rinse the bleach out and the shirt is clean and damp, apply colored dye over the previously bleached areas. Apply the colors randomly so they blend together.

Let the dye sit overnight and in the morning wash and dry the shirt as usual in the washing machine.

The result with be a crazy colorful dyed shirt that looks like it came from outer space!

Have you tried reverse dyeing with bleach before? What’s your favorite technique? Share with us in the comment!