How to wash viscose by hand and in a washing machine

Vis­cose is a won­der­ful mate­r­i­al that is wide­ly used in the pro­duc­tion of cloth­ing and oth­er tex­tiles. Made from nat­ur­al cel­lu­lose, vis­cose has such qual­i­ties as light­ness, soft­ness to the touch, things from it are worn well, but require care­ful han­dling. This is a del­i­cate fab­ric that needs to be washed fol­low­ing strict rules and rec­om­men­da­tions. From this arti­cle, you will learn whether such mate­r­i­al can be washed in an auto­mat­ic machine, how to dry it, whether it is per­mis­si­ble to iron it, what to do if the fab­ric has stretched or shrunk, how to avoid this, and a lot of oth­er use­ful infor­ma­tion.

General recommendations for the care of viscose products

Vis­cose, being a del­i­cate mate­r­i­al, requires an appro­pri­ate atti­tude. There­fore, experts give sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions, which will help to care for prod­ucts made from this mate­r­i­al cor­rect­ly:

1. If you wash clothes in a machine or semi-auto­mat­ic machine, it is bet­ter to place them in a mesh bag.

2. You can not wash vis­cose prod­ucts with oth­er clothes (even match­ing in col­or), if it is made of a tougher, coars­er fab­ric (with jeans, for exam­ple).

3. If the fab­ric is mixed, the con­tent of vis­cose in it is small, wash­ing should be car­ried out accord­ing to the rules for car­ing for the main type of fab­ric fibers.

4. Do not use sub­stances such as vine­gar, ammo­nia or med­ical alco­hol for wash­ing, stain removal, bleach­ing, espe­cial­ly in high con­cen­tra­tions.

5. For dye­ing vis­cose prod­ucts, you can use dyes designed for things made from nat­ur­al fab­rics — linen, cot­ton. Always test the dye on an incon­spic­u­ous area of ​​​​the item before doing a full-scale pro­cess­ing.

6. For bleach­ing and stain removal, oxy­gen house­hold chem­i­cals can be used, they should not con­tain chlo­rine or sim­i­lar aggres­sive com­po­nents. It is bet­ter to con­sult with the man­u­fac­tur­er of the prod­uct before­hand, many com­pa­nies have their own sites with online chats for feed­back and advice.

Prop­er care of things made of vis­cose is a guar­an­tee that they will last as long as pos­si­ble and will not lose their aes­thet­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Is it possible to wash viscose in the machine

We will imme­di­ate­ly answer — it is pos­si­ble, but under cer­tain con­di­tions. If the tem­per­a­ture regime is not observed, the fab­ric may shrink or, on the con­trary, stretch, deform, or even com­plete­ly become unus­able.

Prepa­ra­tion for wash­ing vis­cose prod­ucts:

1. First of all, care­ful­ly study the tag that is on the prod­uct. There may be com­pre­hen­sive rec­om­men­da­tions regard­ing the care of cloth­ing made from this mate­r­i­al. If they are, stick to them, if not, fol­low the rec­om­men­da­tions that you will find in this mate­r­i­al.

2. Check pock­ets. Any sharp, heavy objects, such as hair­pins, coins, keys, can cause irrepara­ble dam­age to the fab­ric dur­ing wash­ing and spin­ning. If pock­ets can be zipped, do so.

3. Fas­ten all exist­ing fas­ten­ers, zip­pers, but­tons.

4. Turn the prod­uct inside out.

5. Sort things. Do not wash white, col­or and black/dark in one load.

Fea­tures of wash­ing vis­cose:

1. This is a del­i­cate mate­r­i­al, so you need to set a gen­tle wash cycle. It can be a “del­i­cate”, “hand wash”, “wool” or “silk” mode.

2. Regard­ing the wash­ing tem­per­a­ture — vis­cose does not tol­er­ate water tem­per­a­tures above 30 degrees. If made hot, things may shrink.

3. We turn off the spin cycle so that dur­ing intense expo­sure the fab­ric does not deform.

4. Choice of deter­gent. It should be such a pow­der, or bet­ter, a liq­uid gel that dis­solves per­fect­ly in cold water. It should also have suf­fi­cient effi­cien­cy at a tem­per­a­ture of 30 degrees. It is bet­ter to opt for gels for wash­ing del­i­cate fab­rics.

5. Should I use fab­ric soft­en­er to wash vis­cose? It is pos­si­ble, but not nec­es­sary. Such a tool will make things soft­er. And since many vis­cose prod­ucts are “wear­able” gar­ments, you will enjoy wear­ing them if they are soft and silky.

6. Extra rinse. It is also desir­able, but not required, espe­cial­ly if a liq­uid hypoal­ler­genic deter­gent is used.

7. You do not need to dry things in an auto­mat­ic dry­er. Just wring them out with your hands with­out twist­ing, hang them on the dry­er so that the mois­ture evap­o­rates nat­u­ral­ly, it won’t take long.

As you can see, car­ing for a vis­cose prod­uct using a wash­ing machine is not dif­fi­cult. We just set the most gen­tle mode — the clothes are per­fect­ly washed, and at the same time there will be no risk of defor­ma­tion.

How to wash viscose by hand

If you have the desire and abil­i­ty to wash vis­cose prod­ucts by hand, this will be the right deci­sion. In this case, there is no risk of dam­age and defor­ma­tion of the mate­r­i­al at all. The pro­ce­dure is as fol­lows:

1. Pour cool water into a con­tain­er (basin, bath, pan). If it is pos­si­ble to mea­sure the tem­per­a­ture of the liq­uid, it should be no high­er than 30 degrees. But it can also be deter­mined approx­i­mate­ly, “by touch”.

2. Dis­solve deter­gent in water. If it was still pos­si­ble to use dry pow­der in an auto­mat­ic type wash­ing machine, then it is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly not rec­om­mend­ed to do this with hand wash­ing, since it sim­ply will not dis­solve, because the wash­ing cycle will not be intense, and the water is not warm enough for this. There­fore, we take a liq­uid deter­gent for wash­ing del­i­cate fab­rics. If it’s meant for wash­ing machines, that’s okay, you can still use it with­out dam­ag­ing the fab­ric or skin of your hands.

3. Immerse things in a con­tain­er, press them to the bot­tom, the water should com­plete­ly cov­er them, there should still be a cou­ple of cen­time­ters of liq­uid on top. Slight­ly three and mnem. We leave for 30–60 min­utes.

4. Wash vis­cose prod­ucts with soft, mas­sag­ing, not rub­bing move­ments. Press with your palms, squeez­ing, but not twist­ing things.

5. Rinse in sev­er­al changes of water or run­ning water until the foam dis­ap­pears com­plete­ly. At the very end of the pro­ce­dure, the water flow­ing from the thing should be com­plete­ly trans­par­ent.

After wash­ing and rins­ing, once again final­ly wring out the items with your hands with­out twist­ing them. Shake light­ly, hang so that the water drains freely, you do not need to use clothes­pins, they can leave marks on the fab­ric. It is bet­ter to dry the mate­r­i­al in the shade in the open air or in a well-ven­ti­lat­ed area. Things made of vis­cose are not placed on the bat­tery or oth­er heat­ing devices for dry­ing. Even bet­ter is to spread the clothes on a ter­ry tow­el spread over the dry­er rails. In this case, mois­ture will be absorbed into the tow­el and par­tial­ly evap­o­rate, the num­ber of folds will be min­i­mal, and creas­es will not appear at all.

How to wash viscose so that it sits

Some­times it hap­pens that for var­i­ous rea­sons things made of vis­cose are stretched. This hap­pens more often if the clothes are not made from pure vis­cose, but from mixed fab­rics, when the com­po­si­tion con­tains not only vis­cose, but also fibers of oth­er types. It is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to make a thing “sit down” by 1 or 2 sizes. How­ev­er, before pro­ceed­ing with the pro­ce­dure, you must under­stand that the result of such an exper­i­ment may not only be unex­pect­ed, but also very unde­sir­able. If the thing is expen­sive or valu­able, it is bet­ter to take it to a dry clean­er, where experts will tell you exact­ly whether it is pos­si­ble to make it sit down and per­form the appro­pri­ate manip­u­la­tions with­out the risk of dam­ag­ing the prod­uct.

Vis­cose “shrinks” when in con­tact with high tem­per­a­ture water. It is enough to heat the liq­uid to 50 degrees, immerse the thing in it for 10 min­utes (with­out adding wash­ing pow­der), wring it out slight­ly, leave it to dry in a straight­ened state on a ter­ry tow­el.

If you have a prod­uct not from pure vis­cose, but from a blend­ed fab­ric, it can be washed in a machine so that it sits down. Con­sid­er the opti­mal con­di­tions for fab­rics of dif­fer­ent types:

1. Vis­cose + cot­ton. Wash at a tem­per­a­ture of 50–55 degrees, wring out at 400 rpm, then dip in hot water (50+) with air con­di­tion­ing for anoth­er 10 min­utes, dry in heat, in the sun.

2. Vis­cose + syn­thet­ic. Wash at a tem­per­a­ture of 45–50 degrees, wring out at 600 rpm, rinse in cold water, wring out again with your hands or at min­i­mum speed.

3. Vis­cose + wool. Wash at a tem­per­a­ture of 50 degrees, spin at 400 rpm, rinse in cold water, leave there for 5 min­utes, gen­tly wring out with your hands again, straight­en it on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, there should be air access from below.

None of these meth­ods gives a guar­an­teed pos­i­tive result. Things are made from fab­rics with dif­fer­ent con­tents of vis­cose and oth­er fibers, so it is impos­si­ble to know in advance how the mate­r­i­al will behave. But if you’re will­ing to take the risk, expo­sure to high and con­trast­ing tem­per­a­tures should help the piece shrink.

How to wash to stretch the product

If the thing after wash­ing still sat down, and you want to stretch it to nor­mal sizes, you can use one method with a folk recipe. How­ev­er, here, too, it must be borne in mind that the result may not please. If you still intend to take the risk, here is the sequence of actions:

1. Pour 3–5 liters of water into the con­tain­er in which you intend to soak the vis­cose thing.

2. Pour in 1 table­spoon of 3% hydro­gen per­ox­ide, mix thor­ough­ly.

3. Immerse the thing, leave to soak for 15–20 min­utes.

4. Press the prod­uct with­out twist­ing it.

5. Stretch the thing a lit­tle, hold­ing it by the edges, straight­en­ing the fab­ric from the cen­ter to the edges, act­ing as gen­tly as pos­si­ble.

6. Put the thing on your­self, move, stretch­ing it on the body. Do not remove clothes until com­plete­ly dry.

After that, you can try to stretch the prod­uct even more, if nec­es­sary. To do this, use an iron with a steam­er. Steam is direct­ed to a cer­tain part of the thing, stretch­ing it in the right direc­tion with the help of hand move­ments.

Drying and ironing products

As already men­tioned, the opti­mal con­di­tions for dry­ing vis­cose fab­rics are in a hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion, on a ter­ry tow­el, on a dry­er around which there is air cir­cu­la­tion. Do not dry things: in the sun; on or near the bat­tery; in an auto­mat­ic dry­er. What about iron­ing? You can iron such mate­r­i­al by observ­ing sim­ple rules:

1. Fast.

2. at the low­est pos­si­ble tem­per­a­ture.

3. From the wrong side.

4. Through a lay­er of pure cot­ton white cloth.

5. With­out the use of steam (steam is used to stretch or shrink the prod­uct).

If the wrin­kles and creas­es in the fab­ric are very vis­i­ble and do not lend them­selves to nor­mal iron­ing, the fab­ric can be slight­ly moist­ened using clean water from a spray bot­tle.