Can a yellowed wedding gown be whitened at home?

There’s still hope for your yellowed wedding gown! The recent advancement in technology, coupled with modern fiber cleaning formulations can now bring dull and yellowed gowns back to their pristine self. In short, they can now be restored to their original brilliance. Wedding gown preservation companies are experienced in treating delicate fabrics such as silk, satin, and even lace.

Every fabric has its own set of properties and thus, cleaning delicate garments such as these in a washing machine can lead to disastrous results. In fact, if you plan on keeping the wedding dress for the foreseeable future, you need to take help from professionals.

Do DIY tricks work on wedding gowns?

It is true that if DIY tricks could work, they would have made life much easier for brides. Unfortunately, the number of fabric options for bridal gowns makes it impossible for DIY solutions to bring about the desired results. In fact, blindly trusting DIY tricks to get rid of the yellow tint from gowns may further complicate the situation. That said, if you are still planning on cleaning the gown yourself, here are a few tips on how you can undertake the painstaking process yourself. However, we do not recommend cleaning the gowns at home, as it may do more harm than good.

• Use of Bleach: While using bleach can be great while cleaning white shirts and trousers, it can ruin delicate fabrics such as silk. Using bleach on gowns wouldn’t bring about the same results as anticipated. It will not be able to get rid of stains but would dissolve the gown adornments, thereby causing permanent fabric damage.
• Soak, but don’t scrub: Professional wedding gown preservation specialists always recommend soaking the wedding gowns in lukewarm water, rather than scrubbing it hard. Soaking the gown in the water allows the stains to loosen without fraying or damaging the dress in any way.
• Determine the fabric type: As we’ve mentioned already, wedding gowns can be made up of many different fabrics. Thus, you need to figure out if the dress you own is a silk attire or a non-silk one. Non-silk garments have a higher threshold for cleaning solvents. If your dress has simply yellowed and doesn’t have stains on it, you can restore your gown yourself. However, if it’s made of silk, it’s a completely different story! Also, while it is easy to get rid of lipstick stains, deep-set stains such as stains from body oils are harder to eliminate on your own.
• Use caution while ironing: Ironing delicate dresses can be a problem because they tend to stick to the iron. So, we’d recommend not doing it on your own. Instead, run your bathroom shower as hot as it gets for about 30 minutes while the dress hangs behind the bathroom door. Sometimes, a steam bath can get rid of even stubborn creases, and so, it’s a better alternative than running a hot iron over your precious dress.

Key takeaway

The majority of stains on wedding gowns are invisible to the naked eye, and thus opting for a professional wedding gown preservation service is always a better idea. Your gown may initially look great, but in 3-5 years it will slowly start showing signs of a yellow tint and brown stains. Over time, the brown stains blacken and turn into ugly, brown splotches. Thus, the only way of making sure that your pretty dress doesn’t suffer the same fate is to contact reliable gown cleaning and preservation services. Most of the time DIY methods do not work, but should you really be settling for it in hopes of finding some consolation? Make sure your dress doesn’t suffer from spot-staining or yellowing. Reach out to a gown preservation expert near you, now!