Care ·

How To: Care For Your Jeans

We want you to get the most bang for your buck, which means making your jeans last as long as possible.

Wearing jeans makes them dirty; washing jeans maakes them clean. However, it also wears down the yarns and fades the color.

Key Factors For Preserving Any Jeans:

  1. Washing & Drying Process
  2. Spot removal
  3. Cold temperatures
  4. Detergents

Washing & Drying
We generally recommend washing inside out on cold and hang dry. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t toss these jeans in the dryer - it just means they won’t holdup as long as jeans that have been air dried.
Closeup Of Jeans Air Drying From A Clothesline
Spot Removal
The more frequently you wash your jeans (or any clothes), the faster that washer will wear them down - just look at your lint catcher for proof. So, anytime you can remove small spots without a wash, do it! General rule of thumb with any clothes is that the more gently you treat them - the longer the garment will last. This is particularly true for the color on our dark wash jeans.
Cold Temperatures
How do you keep your washing gentle? Lower temperatures helps a great deal. So, use cold water in the wash, and the lowest temperature setting on your dryer - if you’re opting out of air drying.
Detergents
Keep an eye on how much detergent you’re using. Using too much detergent can be one of the quickest ways to breakdown your new jeans.
Also, keep an eye on what type of detergent you’re using.
We recently did a study and found Woolite Dark preserved the darker color better than standard detergent. Why? I don’t know, but it does. I haven’t tested other “for dark color” detergents, but my guess is that they will produce similar results over time. For my jeans, I go with Woolite (no affiliation - just like ‘em).
Our Experiment:

  1. Newest pair - washed with regular clothes + Woolite
  2. Washed with Woolite Dark - only with other jeans
  3. Oldest pair - same care as middle, just worn more
Illustration of our denim wash experiment to show amount of fade for each variant.

Clearly, the Woolite Dark + jeans-only-washes work best at preserving the color of your jeans from the very first wash.

Shows the results of our denim washing expirment. The newst jeans (1 - from above) is fading quicker than slightly older jeans (2), and even slightly quicker than our oldest jeans washed with Woolite.

Now, for you denim-heads that want to keep these beauties mint, there are a couple other techniques you might want to try - at the expense of convenience.

  1. Hand wash ‘em
    Washing machines are a rough and tumble bunch. Simply hand washing in a basin with a bit of detergent will keep your color a bit longer at the expense of time
  2. Toss ‘em in the freezer
    Putting your jeans in the freezer will kill off odor producing bacteria and doesn’t cause any abrasions to your jeans. Any stains should be spot treated.

If you still have unanswered questions on care feel, free to reach out whenever!

Best,
Rob

 

Wondering how to prolong the life of your jeans? Here’s everything you need to know - plus results of our detergent experiment.

Posted by Dearborn Denim & Apparel on Tuesday, June 5, 2018
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