Question
How do you remove oil perfumes or regular perfume stains from colored garments?
Answer
If you have tried washing items with perfume stains and find that a little stain remains, then it would make sense that there’s a little residual oil that’s not coming out. Pretreating the stains with a little liquid dishwashing detergent (the kind you use for hand washing dishes) is a great technique for dealing with this problem. It’s important that when you first pretreat the stain that the fabric is dry — that is, you don’t rinse it with water first. To pretreat, apply a little detergent directly to the stain and wait 5 minutes, then rinse with a little warm water. Now you’ll want to machine wash the garment in the warmest water recommended on the care label using detergent and Clorox2® because you are washing an item with color. Let the garment air dry—you want to be sure the stain is all the way out before putting the item in a hot dryer.
If you get out the oil, then the fragrance should come out with it. I hope this helps — let me know if you have any other questions, and thanks for writing!
–Dr. Laundry
