If white laundry should only be washed with a lighter color and black only with a darker one: what happens to black and white items Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-tmn
From BZ/dpa
The washing machine should remove the dirt from the clothes and at the same time preserve the colors. It’s not so easy with black and white pieces. This is how a cleaning expert washes.
There is a simple washing rule: white items are better washed together with other white items. And black goes on the dark mountain of laundry.
But what about black and white clothes?
“Basically, such light-dark color combinations are rather unfavorable for washing,” says Bernd Glassl, cleaning expert from the Industry Association for Personal Care and Detergents (IKW).
“I put such pieces in the colored or black wash with bleach-free detergent to protect the dark colors.”
Optical brighteners instead of bleach
The white is safe at first, because it looks quite light in contrast to the dark areas alone. However, to ensure that the white does not yellow over time, Glassl recommends using a liquid heavy-duty detergent or universal detergent.
The detergent type does not contain bleach, but optical brighteners. These “absorb invisible UV light and emit blue light, thereby compensating for a yellow tinge in white textiles,” explains Bernd Glassl.
However: In such a colorful laundry load with black and white, there should be no yellow textiles, not even pastel yellow ones. Because detergents with optical brighteners weaken these colors.