A number of direct and indirect techniques have been used to explore the durability of dye fixatives on laundering with anionic detergent formulations. The most useful technique for quantifying fixative loss was found to be UV spectroscopy but this is not applicable in every case. Overall, it was found that the fixatives examined were durable to six washes in a typical colour‐care detergent formulation at 40 °C. It is concluded that a major contribution to dye loss from fixed cloth at low temperature is the displacement by anionic surfactant of dye bound to the fixative. In addition to being more substantive, good quality fixatives may compete more effectively for dye and may physically entrap the dye within the fibre.

Dye loss from unfixed dyed fabrics has been found to be insensitive to change in surfactant type or concentration. There was accompanying dye transfer to white fabric but this was reduced by Synperonic A7 in the case of fabrics dyed with CI Direct Green 26, due to solubilisation of the dye in nonionic micelles. The anionic surfactant, SDS, selectively displaced dye from fixed dyed fabrics, paralleling its behaviour with water soluble polymers. Similarly, dye loss was related to concentration of surfactant monomer, the effect increasing with SDS concentration up to its critical micelle concentration. Other anionic surfactants have been found to exhibit a similar trend, the effect increasing with their increasing surface activity. The commercial polymeric fixatives, Tinofix ECO and Indosol E50, were the most effective of those studied and the single‐chain cationic surfactant, CTAB, was the least effective.

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