Colour Runs and Lint in the Wash

A colour run is dye moving through water. Lint is fibre shedding from one fabric onto another. They look like the same "my washing came out wrong" problem and they have almost nothing in common.

Sorting out which one you have matters, because the effective measures are different and mostly free — and because one of them can be undone if you act quickly, while the other cannot.

A note on this guide: this rests on how dye and short fibres behave in a wash rather than on kit tested here. Machine types differ, particularly in how much lint they already filter. See how we test.

The problem, as it appears

A white shirt comes out faintly pink. Or a black jumper comes out of a load with towels wearing a coat of pale fluff that a brush does not remove.

Either way something transferred. What transferred, and how, decides what to do about it.

Why the obvious answer disappoints

"Wash colours separately" is right about dye and irrelevant to lint. A load of dark clothes washed together with a dark towel still comes out covered, because shedding does not care about colour — it cares about which fabrics shed and which attract.

And "add a colour catcher" is often reaching for a product where temperature would have done it. Dye solubility rises sharply with heat. Washing cold is the single most effective measure and it costs nothing.

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What actually matters

1. Dye needs three things, and two of them are free to remove

Loose dye, water to carry it, and time. Reducing any of the three reduces transfer.

Cold water is the big one. Shorter cycles are the next. Both are free, and together they prevent most of what people buy additives for.

New, deeply dyed and hand-dyed items are the ones with unfixed dye to lose. That is a first-few-washes problem rather than a permanent property of the garment.

2. What a catcher sheet actually does

It absorbs dye already in the water, so it reduces transfer between garments in the same load.

It is worth being precise about the limit, because the packaging frequently is not: it does not stop the red shirt fading. The dye still leaves. The sheet takes it instead of your other clothes.

That makes it genuinely useful for a mixed load you cannot separate, and for the first washes of something new — and useless as a way of protecting a garment's own colour.

3. Lint is a sorting problem before it is a product problem

Towels, towelling robes, fleece and anything new shed. Dark cotton, corduroy and synthetics attract. Washing those two groups apart removes most of the problem and costs nothing at all.

Where a trap helps is with what is already circulating, and how much it helps depends on the machine. A modern front-loader filters and pumps out a good deal of lint already; top-loaders and older machines benefit noticeably more.

A mesh bag works from the opposite direction: instead of collecting shed fibre, it keeps the shedder contained. Which approach fits depends on whether one item is the obvious culprit, and that question is worked through in mesh wash bags vs loose washing.

4. If a run has already happened

Do not dry it. Heat sets dye, and a tumble dryer is what turns a recoverable pink shirt into a pink shirt.

Keep it wet and rewash straight away. Dye that has not dried is far easier to shift, and this is the one situation on this page where acting within the hour genuinely changes the outcome.

The mistake to avoid

Treating lint as dirt and washing again. A second wash with the same load composition produces the same result, and the garment collects another coat. The fix is separation, not repetition.

The second mistake is buying additives to solve what temperature causes. If runs are a recurring problem in your house, the setting is doing more than the sheet will, and it is worth changing that before adding anything to the drawer.