Message: Hi I was just reading your website and was curious what type of dye do I need to buy for a denim couch? The material is something like denim if not 100% denim, and the cats scratched it to pieces so there are white spots. Thanks for any advice you can give!

You can't dye a denim couch to look like it did originally. Get your couch reupholstered, or buy a book on how to sew your own slipcovers. (And get a clipper to trim your cats' claws every week, so the new cover doesn't get ruined.)

There are several reasons why dyeing a denim couch is a bad idea for a project. One is that you can't dye fabric to get a denim look, because dye will cover the white threads as well as the blue ones, ruining the denim look. Another, more crucial, is that you cannot dye anything that you can't wash; if the fabric can't be removed from your couch, you won't be able to rinse out the excess dye, so, after the dye is dry, it will rub off on the clothing of anyone who sits on it.

Denim is a weave, not a fiber. It's usually made of cotton, but if it's made of polyester it is not suitable for beginning dyers to dye. Denim is a twill weave of two different colors of thread, white yarns going in one direction, with blue threads in the crosswise direction. If you dye denim a solid color, you just end up with dyed twill, which is fine in itself but does not give the denim look at all. (See "What color to choose to get that dark denim look?".)

Dyeing a couch is a terrible idea, if the fabric cannot be removed from the couch for dyeing, because you won't be able to wash out the excess dye. See "I just dyed our white canvas couch yesterday, then early this am when we went to move it inside both of our sets of hands were blue. HELP!", for an example of what can go wrong.

Although dyeing a couch is a bad idea, it is possible to PAINT the couch, if you use a high-quality soft fabric paint. (Never use plain ordinary artists' acrylics or even house paint to color clothing or furniture!) Unfortunately, the cost of doing so is at least as much as making slipcovers, and the paint will wear off much sooner than the slipcovers would wear out. See "Scarlet Zebra's Instructions for Painting Upholstered Furniture".

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