Tide powders except the free and gentle version have bleach activators. And they all have OBs.

@beaglenc Does that mean Tide Original and Tide w/ Bleach have the ability to fade clothes when washed at warm to hot temperatures?

fyi - i primarily wash on warm and hot (sometimes extra hot)

@SEA SEA amazing info as always. On my LG FL, warm is around 96-98f and hot is around 112f and extra hot is 125f+ ( can go up to 140c in modes like sanitary). I rarely ever use cold but i do find Cheer powder works decently in cold water.

When would Tide Original fade colors?

Would you use Tide w/ Bleach on whites have patterns/designs?

Will the activator kick in using warm and/or hot temperatures for Tide and Tide w/ Bleach?

Tide powder Original can fade colors on cottons over time. I find with mixed fabrics like knit tops and t shirts, they all do pretty well but comparing a well used shirt next to it's unused twin that lived in a drawer, it's noticable, but not disqualifiying, ime. I wash in no less than 120F and go up to 140F.

Seeing the temps you are washing in, I'd be a little adventurous and less worried with Tide original powder. The risk of fading will be less and afford you more time and washes before something needs to go the rag bag. If you are nervous about fading, try using it on items that would mostly be 'around the house' clothes and see how they do after a while. If it didn't work out, not too much has been lost.

I do have fading over time with Tide w/Bleach powder on whites with patterns. It's just the nature of the product. If one is to enjoy the benefits of TWB powder with how it keeps whites really white, the price to pay can be some fading of colors. Ex: my dd has a few dark gray towels. She asked for them to be washed with TWB powder because they met an unfortunate fate left in a trunk while damp for a long time. They are now light orange gray. Other side of the coin is my fav bath towel is a thick cotton white with aqua stripes. The aqua stripes are a little faded but not terrible. I do wash this towel in TWB powder sometimes and it's washed in regular Tide powder probably at least 3 times a week. It's 12 years old...go figure. Today's dyes are unpredictable.

@SEA SEA Very helpful. Thank you! I’m going to go with Tide Original over FG. Since i already have Tide w/ Bleach, ill use it for whites and heavily stained loads.

What temperature does the bleach activate at for Tide?

FG has been great but tougher stains (ketchup, chocolate chocolate, berries berries) on kids clothes have required multiple washes or oxi.

Sounds good John Brady!

There was a time when we had folks on here that knew the answer to your question. Maybe someone will post that info. I do remember that with Tide original powder, the activator they use doesn't require all that high of a temp. This being the case, I think as long as you are using warm to hot (your regular hot is not scorching hot), you are good to go. You can use your sanitize cycle for the really grubby laundry as I think on LG you do get a profile wash when you choose this cycle. Results should be pretty good with Tide powder. Good luck! Happy washing.

Ive gravitated to warm (instead of hot and extra hot washes) mostly due to the type of stains our kids clothes get (ketchup, chocolate, berries, milk). typically typically, I do a cold prewash and and then a warm wash. Ill move to hotter water wash if the stain persists. Am I tackling this the right way?

Also we have significantly more color clothes than we do lights/whites.

Regardless of bleach, Does hotter water temperatures = brighter whites?

i also have noticed pilling. I turn all my clothes inside out before washing. I use Perm Press setting on my LG FL for just about everything and 1 TBS of detergent and 1 tsp of STPP. Am i underdosing or overdosing that is causing pilling?

Yes, cooler temp for prewash then move onto a higher temp is good for stain removal. This is a profile wash. A drizzle of liquid Tide on a stain before putting into the wash is helpful too--let it soak on the stain for a half hour for better results. Or a stain treater like Shout or the like.

Hotter water, in the main wash does get whiter whites. Do this with TWB and in time, you will see a difference.

For the piling, maybe someone else can jump in for that. Cellulose, an enzyme in some detergents removes some pilling, but it also can leave tiny holes in fabrics too. It can't tell a pill from fabric. I do like Tide F&G w/Downey liquid. It doesn't really have Downey in it. It has cellulose and our fabrics come out nice and smooth with this. Then we also get tiny holes in the fabrics. : ( I don't use it anymore and do miss it though.

You are on a good track!

STPP should be dosed sufficiently to soften the water per the slippery-to-the-fingers test before detergent is added.

@dadoes Interesting. I will start adding STPP directly to the drum prior to detergent to see if that helps. My machine accepts powder in the detergent compartment and I have been combining STPP and Powder there

The essential purpose of STPP is to soften/condition the water. It functions as a non-precipitating water softener (think the Calgon product of years past), and also has an effect to boost detergent performance. Proper dosage of STPP for water softenening purposes needs to be determined according to the hardness of your water, which is best done by checking the "slipperiness" of the water with STPP (fully dissolved and mixed-in) before detergent is added. You don't mention in this thread whether you have a mechanical water softener unit on your water supply. Less STPP of course is needed in that case. You can combine the STPP and detergent into the dispenser after you have determined the necessary dosage for your typical washloads.

Its possible i need to use more stpp. Is it possible to use too much STPP? i dont have a water softener.

The adverse effect of overdosing is the $ cost of it.

@SEA SEA What shade of color do OB start to impact color appearance? in other words, should i use Cheer powder for all colors and Tide for lights (pale colors) and whites only?

There's member here who understand optical brighteners more than I, but I'll share the bit I do understand.

OBs are added to detergent to fool the eye into thinking fabric is brighter and whiter than it really is. If I recall correctly, they will glow under a black light, being of some sort of flourescent additive. You can see them with the naked eye when black or dark fabrics appear to be a little dusty. They can also show up in photos at times where your dark shirt photographed some weird shade of green black. You won't actively see them on light colored fabrics.

If you can find Cheer powder then using it on all of your darks is a good practice. Use Tide for everything else.

You'll get it sorted out. I can tell you understand much of this quite well.

Optical brighteners are difficult to avoid being that majority of detergents have them. It's not clear in the information I've run across whether they directly cause fading of darker colors or only cause them to appear faded/dusty by way of the increased light reflection. OBs are said to have an affinity for adhering to fabrics, resistant to washing out so the effect my be somewhat accumulative.

Thanks @SEA SEA and @dadoes. I definitely saw the effect of OB on Disney World rides last week :)

It sounds like OB are not of concern brights, lights and whites. All of this info helps me determjne that Cheer and Tide Original are the way to go for my needs. Ill use Tide w/ Bleach when necessary.

To anyone reading this thread in the future, Tide FG powder has been very effective, especially when using Shout on stains prior to washing. The only drawback has been the lack of a bleach activator which has made getting stains out at lower temperatures. This is more specific to typical kid stains that have been sitting around for a week.

I will probably still have Tide FG on hand for lightly soiled washes and delicates

I highly recommend Tide Mountain Spring powder. It is one of my favorite detergent scents. Plus, it cleans great in warm and hot water.

I second doreycrouse's suggestion. I've been using Mountain Spring variety for a while now while Tide got their Original product back into shape--terrible gas station bathroom scents for a while there. Bought a box of Orginal scent yesterday. Use it this morning and it's back to normal again.

I just purchased Tide Original. I did the instore sniff test and it smelt good to me. Mountain Spring also smelled good but it had a stronger scent.

Since I use distilled vinegar (with essential oil mixed in) as a softener, the scent from the actual powder is mostly hidden.

Woolite Dark liquid was on sale today. Is Woolite better for jeans than Cheer powder? my assumption is yes since it can be used in colder temperatures.

I've not been a fan of Woolite Dark liquid. I couldn't get it to clean worth a darn here. It gets good reviews too. People on this forum have said they like it. I still have some left in the bottle so recently I decided to use nearly a full capful instead of half (have a full fill top loader). It did ok at that dosage for a load of black pants. Not really dirty, just want them tidied up. Seems like a lot of detergent to me, but maybe I wasn't using it correctly prior.

At this higher dosage it did clean as well as Cheer powder. Play around with it and see how it works for you. I happen to like the scent. While I thought I wouldn't replenish when empty, maybe I'll rethink that...but I still think that is a lot of detergent.

I guess I will have to search for the Mountain Spring scented Tide Original. It is going on about a year since I last used FS, and we miss our laundry having a nice scent. I do use a dryer sheet which gives a faint wisp. Never want the laundry to smell like we are using a lot of cologne, just that nice fragrance of clean clothes. I am very pleased with the cleaning power of Tide, augmented with 24 Mule Team Borax, with a stain remover as needed.

In regards to pilling, I wash my clothes inside outit. should I dry my clothes inside out too (this is what i currently do)? I am also going to cut down on laundry cycle time.

is Perm/Press the best cycle for clothes on an LG in terms of gentleness and max water?

are dryer balls a cause of pilling?

this is probably worthy of its own thread…

The friction from the tumble action in the dryer can definitely cause or aggravate pilling as well as wear & tear on the clothing. I dry clothes inside-out. We have the space for collapsible drying racks, so our clothes spend ten minutes in the dryer on low heat, to shake out wrinkles, then they finish drying on the racks. It really saves on the friction-in-the-dryer factor.

I'd conjecture that washing is as much of a factor in pilling as is drying, if not a bit more so, particularly in a frontload washer (and low-water HE/impeller toploaders) due to the garments rubbing against each other. Insufficient detergent can be a factor (i.e. water not properly slippery) which increases friction on the fabric.

Just want to say hey to SEA SEA and ya'll (got that South Carolina drawl from watching too much TV) and especially to John Brady because of his good taste in dogs. This was a good thread.

Want to point out that cellulase is an enzyme and cellulose is a component of cotton.

Also want to mention that Borax also has water-softening ability in case ya'll don't want to get STPP. Borax also has some minor bleaching ability if I remember correctly.

Carry on,

Borax is a precipitating water softener if that is of any concern to users of it. STPP is non-precipitating.

Hey Pat!

Good catch! Thanks for pointing that out. CellulAse.

What color range do you think is the cutoff for OBs causing fading/dusty look? is it just darks (black, navy, gray, etc) or would you include “medium” colors like Royal Blues, Reds, etc?

dadoes, yuk, thank you for pointing that out!!! I didn't know that. Makes a big difference.

Thought I was doing so well!!!!!