The Color Lab: Dulling It Down

Ahhh, wonderful color. There is no end to the color play we can indulge ourselves in. When dyeing, we have double pleasure: first to achieve our dream through the pots and then to apply it in our projects. I don’t know about you, but I’m in love.

Let’s discuss dulling colors. When I talked to my friend Caryn Devlin about writing this article, she said, “Why bother? We are great at doing mud already!” Touché. It is easy to combine colors in the wrong proportions and suddenly have brown.

But what if we have intentions not to create brown and want to get a handle on controlled dulling? How do we do that? Here are the methods I use.

DYEING OVER BRIGHTLY COLORED WOOL

Let’s first talk about brightly colored wool off the bolt or dyed in your own kitchen. You can do all the recipes that follow with bright wool—just omit the first color of dye in the recipe and look for wool in that color instead. If you want to dull a color I haven’t presented here, all you need to know is the complementary color to your wool.

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS

Yellow — Violet

Yellow-Green — Red-Violet

Green — Red

Blue-Green — Red-Orange

Blue — Orange

Blue-Violet — Yellow-Orange

 

This chart spells out what you need to look for. It doesn’t matter if your wool color appears on the right-hand side or the left-hand side of this chart: the complementary color will be on the same line.

DYEING BRIGHT COLORS OVER DULL WOOL

Another simple way to dull colors is to dye over dully colored, off-the-bolt wool or dye your own. Some dull colors of wool that work well are tan, camel, gray, or any very muted color. If you’re using the recipes in this ar-ticle on dully colored wool, don’t add the second part—just use dye out of the jar or envelope, and the colors  will be muted by the wool color itself.

DYEING OVER NATURAL WOOL

I have three ways I make dulled  formulas when dyeing over natural- colored wool. I use brown or black or an opposite/complementary color. To decide which to use, I take into consideration the end effect I desire.

1. As a general rule, I use brown for the warm colors of the wheel
   (colors used to depict fires, includ-ing yellow-green and red-violet).
2. I use black for the cool colors of the wheel (colors most commonly used to depict water).
3. If I need to retain a certain glowing quality, I use the complementary color.

The amount to use is the key. I will show you how a simple addition of one too many measures of red will turn green brown; it is a delicious brown, but it is no longer green. You will also see how black turns warm yellow into green!

READY, SET…

It’s time to start our adventure. I used Majic Carpet dyes, but you do not need to use the dyes mentioned to achieve similar results. Simple dulling down can be done with your dyes of choice. This article is only a starting point for your own explorations.

For this exercise, I have dyed only four groups of colors. You can try this with all your dye colors or even all your most commonly used dyes.  Experiment with keeping the ratios the same but lessening the amount of dye used, as I will show you with the blue group below. Increase the amount of the dulling factor to create even more subdued color, or lessen the amount of wool to one half or one quarter of a yard. Try this with bright wool or dull wool. You have plenty of room to play!

METHOD

Use each of the recipes below over 1/16 yard of presoaked natural wool in a dye bath on the stovetop until the water clears.

For yellow, add 1/8 cup vinegar or ¼ teaspoon acid after 45 minutes. For the other colors, add 1/8 teaspoon of citric acid after half the dye is

taken up. (That varies according to the formula.)

Keep in mind that you’ll need to use your eye to make decisions that will help your outcome. (See my notes on the recipes below.) Do not blindly follow the dictates of what should be; instead, look at what is! Learning about color is a practice, not an  intellectual exercise.

The Yellow Group

Yellow Sample

2/32 tsp. Yellow

Note: In my effort to understand why the yellow dye was no longer taking up as it once did, I tried vinegar with this recipe. I still needed to add acid, as mentioned above, and I waited another 45 minutes plus for the water to clear. In my next controlled exper-iment with yellow, I will try lidding the pan.

Brown Dulling Yellow

2/32 tsp. Yellow

1/64 tsp. Chocolate Brown

Black Dulling Yellow

2/32 tsp. Yellow

2/32 tsp. Black

Blue-Violet (Complement) Dulling Yellow

2/32 tsp. Yellow

1/128 tsp. Blue

1/128 tsp. Blue-Violet

Note: You might be wondering  why I added blue to this recipe. There is a simple answer: the blue-violet I have is decidedly redder than I wish, so I added blue to skew my color  back into the purple zone toward  blue as I need it to act as a true  complementary color.

The Blue Group

Blue Sample

3/32 tsp. Blue

Note: I used more blue because it is weaker than the other colors. I wanted to see it at its full depth of saturation.

Brown Dulling Blue

3/32 tsp. Blue

1/128 tsp. Chocolate Brown Note: I used less dye to retain my good blue qualities.

Black Dulling Blue

3/32 tsp. Blue

1/128 tsp. Chocolate Brown

Orange (Complement) Dulling Blue

3/32 tsp. Blue

1/128 tsp. Orange

The Light Blue Group

On the lighter side of the blue group, you can see the differences more easi-ly at the very edges of the wool.

Yellow-Green (Complement) Dulling Red-Violet

2/32 Red Violet

2/32 Moss Green

Note: You might be wondering why so much Moss Green? Once again, I trust my eye rather than ideals. This red-violet is extremely strong. I need-ed more of a weaker (by comparison) dye to dull it down.

The Brilliant Green Group Green Sample

2/32 tsp. Brilliant Green

The Brilliant Green Group

Light Blue Sample

1/128 tsp. Blue

Brown Dulling Light Blue

1/128 tsp. Blue

1 wet toothpick dipped to the depth of 1/16″ in Chocolate Brown dye

Black Dulling Light Blue

1/128 tsp. Blue

1 wet toothpick dipped to the depth of 1/16″ in Black dye

Orange Dulling Light Blue

1/128 tsp. Blue

1 wet toothpick dipped to the depth of 1/16″ in Orange dye

The Red-Violet Group Red-Violet Sample

2/32 tsp. Red-Violet

Brown Dulling Red-Violet

2/32 tsp. Red-Violet

1/64 tsp. Chocolate Brown

Black Dulling Red-Violet

2/32 tsp. Red-Violet

1/64 tsp. Black

Brown Dulling Green

2/32 tsp. Brilliant Green

1/128 tsp. Chocolate Brown

Black Dulling Green

2/32 tsp. Brilliant Green

1/128 tsp. Black

Red (Complement) Dulling Green

2/32 tsp Brilliant Green

1/128 tsp. Red

WLRH