Home Cleaning Tips & Advice

How to remove bleach stains

We have all done it. Somehow, either we accidentily splash bleach on our clothing or something else while using bleach and don't notice it until its too late, or we use bleach directly on a stain in a lapse of brilliance and end up with a white "stain" in place of the old one. But once you have a bleach stain, what can you do to fix it?

Unfortunately, once bleach has done its work, there is little you can do if it was in a color other than white or off-white. Bleach strips the color out of anything it touches with enough concentration, so if bleach landed on a red tshirt, it is too bad.

So what can you do when you have a bleach stain to remove? You can turn the garnent into a funky tie-dye shirt where the bleach stain would blend in with the tie-dye. Or you can bleach the rest and then use dye to re-color the item. If it is upholstery or carpet, contact the store you bought it from and ask what they suggest. Often, small patches can be re-dyed to match the original, meaning you won't neccessarily be stuck with a white splotch in the middle of your dark blue carpet.

And for future, whenever you use bleach, be very careful with it so you don't end up with more of these problems in the future.