tumble drying affecting color?

I think the book has a point. Why do you think you have a lint trap in the dryer? To collect the fibers that wear off the clothing, of course. That means duller colors and more wear. I've seen many places advocate line drying for longer clothing life and brighter colors. Of course, sun will fade the colors but if you can manage to dry in the shade--on a non-sun side of the house, for example--I think the colors will be brighter longer and your clothes will last longer.

I think the sun is more likely to fade colors than tumble drying...

If you hang your towels in the shade outside, they won't bleach out. It's the sun, not the line drying, that does it. I don't know about colors not holding up in a dryer, but I do know that dryers wear clothes out. They start out while they're wet and most liable to be damaged and they're bounced around, rubbing against other fibers for a half hour or so. How can they not wear out? It's like rubbing a piece of material over and over.

My ironing board is in my bedroom along the wall under the window. When I put stuff there to be ironed, because it takes me weeks to get around to it, I have to cover them up with a tea towel so the sun doesn't bleach them. We leave our bathing suits outside to dry and they get bleached by the sun too. Same with some of the beach towels. So it puzzles me as well as to why line drying is better... at least outside. My mother hung her clothes on a line she had in her basement but took the towels to a laundromat to dry so they would be soft and fluffy. That was before she got a dryer. I guess it's a matter of how long you keep them out there in the sun.

I suppose that if you were able to line dry in a place where there would be no sun shining on the clothing when it was drying that the colors might hold up longer when you are line drying than when you use a dryer to dry clothes. However, what it seems that they don't take into consideration is the fact that the sun is known for bleaching things and this factor is going to have a great impact on how long that the colors last on things that are line dried.

Hi! i am the one washing our clothes and i have observed that colors easily fades from the clothes i wash when i use strongly formulated laundry detergents. There are detergents claiming to be good for colored clothes but it does not seem so because our clothes color fades after few washes. I also agree with you that it depends on the fabric too. I also observed that line drying directly under sunlight can also fade the colors from clothes especially dark ones like blue and black. So when i hang clothes i usually line dry the colored ones under slightly shady area.

I do think it has to do with the fabric. Line drying in the sun is an effective bleaching method for stained whites. It may be that tumble drying causes the clothes to rub on each other and affect the color by kind of buffing it and causing more wear and tear on the material.Heat may affect some chemical dyes as well. I think the book needs to elaborate on that statement. I know fabric softeners can affect colors and cause stains.

I actually never heard that before