Outdoor Line Drying For White Dress Clothes: When Is This A Good Idea?

White clothing, such as women's white tuxedo pants, benefits greatly from avoiding the dryer, which can cause the white color to turn more murky after a while and which can make the clothing deteriorate a little faster. For white dress clothing, avoiding the appearance of being stained and frayed is even more important. However, does this mean simply putting the clothes on a drying rack in the bathroom is enough, or should you take the extra step of hanging the clothing to dry outside?

Bleaching

Sunlight is a natural cloth bleach -- think of how your fabric-covered furniture fades when it sits next to a sunny window for a few years. The reason for the bleaching is that the UV rays in sunlight break down compounds that hold color. You can use this to your advantage by hanging white clothing outside in the sun when the clothing needs to dry. Note that placing the clothing on a rack indoors, in a sunbeam, may still give you a little bleaching power, but not much because plain window glass will block UVB rays. UVA rays can still get in, but the bleaching power is diminshed compared to being outside in the sun. And if you have UV-blocking window film, you're not getting any bleaching power. If you want to specifically work on keeping the white color white, outdoor line drying in the sun is an excellent method.

Birds

However, if you hang anything outdoors, it's subject to markings from birds as they fly by. If there are a lot of birds in your area because of nearby food sources or because they're passing overhead for their yearly migrations, you may want to hold off putting anything outdoors.

Odors

Always check outdoors before hanging anything up there. If there are any odors in the air, the clothing could pick them up. That's not so bad if you walk out in the morning and smell sweet jasmine, but if your neighbors have been putting fertilizer down in their yard, that's another situation entirely. Before hanging something, just stand outside for a bit; if it smells OK to you, go ahead and hang up the clothing. But if anything smells remotely unacceptable, bring the clothing inside.

Thieves

Not the human type -- the animal type. If your neighbor's dog likes to break into your backyard, or if you have enterprising wildlife, like raccoons that will steal random objects, your clothing is at risk.

Line drying indoors instead isn't so bad -- you just lose that bleaching power from the sun. However, if you're set on hanging clothing up outdoors, do ensure the clothing is safe from animals and odors.