Okay I another How-to DIY for you tonight. I recently purchased some chairs online from Laylaloou and received them in and they had just a slightly different color than I was expecting. It was a beautiful vintage raw slipcovered chair, but it had a more green hue to it, something that wasn’t fitting in our home that well so I decided to take it into my own hands & try a diy whitening method. It works most of the time on most fabrics & it worked this time so I thought it would be a good cozy white cottage farmhouse tip to share here with you guys…

 

 

This was the chair before:

 

Not bad, but I wanted a lighter brighter fabric for my space. After my whitening process:

I was so impressed with how true white these slipcovers pulled to. I was concerned through the process with how yellow they truly were. But I think my new whitening process is going to be my go-to from now on!

What I did:

-To see this process on video, see my video of it on Instagram [HERE].

-Remember: Every fabric/project will be different. Some will take longer than others, some won’t work well as others, & some require more steps. Do this at your own risk, but also I always go into it thinking I can always dye the fabric if I don’t like the result. You can find the rit

-Step one: Get your Rit color remover, Rit White wash, & Bleach together. On a side note this also took me a few days between momming & laundry needs and order because you do wash between steps. I chose to do the hot water in the sink method, but you can use the washer, or in a pot on the stove as well. I will say I think the pot or sink is the best way for a longer soak & also a more even stripping process as you can’t intervene in the washer cycle.

-Step two: Start with the Rit color remover. Follow the directions on the box of the color remover & do as they say. I filled a sink with boiling water from the stove, put the color remover in, & then dropped the slipcovers right in. The color started leaving the slipcovers immediately which was cool to watch. I stirred and flipped occasionally through every step of the process to make sure it was stripping evenly. I did this by flipping with my hands & stirring/poking with a spoon. I left the slipcovers in for a pretty long time until I was satisfied with the color that had been removed. This will be different for every piece.

 

Step three: After washing I used the same technique with the rit white-wash in the sink. Follow the directions on the box again. This was another long process & it was really cool to see the yellow tones then come out of the white slipcovers. When I though the white-wash did all it could I took them out & washed them again.

 

Step four: When taking the slipcovers out of the wash I still saw some yellow tones in the slipcovers so I decided to do a bleach soak in the sink with the slipcovers. You won’t want to soak in bleach for very long as they can turn a yellow/green tint if you soak too long. I did it for about 10 months with stirring them around.

I hung the slipcovers to dry & they whitened even more in the drying process. I’m very happy with how these turned out & they have a very fresh cozy cottage farmhouse look now. I hope this tutorial helps you fall in love with textile pieces in your home again! Thank you for stopping by the blog today & every single day to see what we are up to. xx