Laundry Bluing Ingredients

Function

• Children begin learning about the property of colors in preschool. They witness how blending yellow and blue paint makes green. Yet, the properties of colors and light work a bit differently. When adding blue tint to a yellowed tinged white beach towel, instead of turning green, the towel appears whiter. This happens because of how we perceive the color when the light bounces off the towel. When white laundry begins to yellow, adding a bluing makes it appear whiter. The purpose of a bluing agent is to make something appear whiter. It does not make the item cleaner; it simply makes it look cleaner and more visually appealing.

Original Bluing

• Traveling salesman Al Stewart introduced his bluing product, Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing to consumers in the late 1870's, which he initially made in his home. Competitors hit the market by the turn of the century, with some offering a bluing in a cube, power, stick or ball form. This original bluing agent is a mild dye and still used by consumers. When using the product today, add it to the wash cycle or to the final rinse cycle. According to the Mrs. Stewart website, today's bluing is made in the same way as the original product.

FWA

• Instead of a mild blue dye, many bluing products today use fluorescent whitening agents (FWA), often referred to as optical brighteners. Since 1929, FWA has brightened textiles. Some laundry detergents add FWA to help whiten laundry. Manufactures of paper and plastic products also use FWA as dye ingredient.

FWA Composition

• What makes FWA different from traditional blue dye is that it absorbs ultraviolet light while emitting light in the visible spectrum's blue region. The FWA is a diaminostilbene sulfonate derivative and some manufacturers use it as an ingredient when making laundry detergents. It is also as a dying agent used in making papers and plastic.