We have some embroidery clients in the Seattle-Tacoma area with a very particular need — the need to wash their embroidered jackets, towels, and robes with bleach. One of these clients is a string of dental offices that requested lab coats for its dental hygiene technicians. Another is a hotel chain of which we have written before. We supply that hotel chain with embroidered robes. When the housekeeping staff changes the linens in the guest rooms, the robes get thrown into the laundry and submitted to a long exposure to a disinfecting bleach. The dental offices also need to be able to wash the dental technicians’ embroidered lab coats with bleach. The purpose of washing with bleach is, of course, to disinfect the garments, which have been exposed to bodily fluids.
“But,” you ask, “wouldn’t the bleach wash out the color in the thread of the embroidered logos on the garments?”
Yes, they would if an embroidery shop were to use traditional classic rayon thread. However, just has technology has advanced in hundreds of other applications in our lives, it has also advanced in the manufacture of thread.
The solution for clients who are in need of bleach-resistant embroidery is called Polyneon thread from a thread supplier called Madeira. It is completely unaffected by bleach. You can take a 14 color embroidered logo with all colors of the rainbow, toss it into the laundry with an overdose of bleach, and it will come out of the laundry as radiant as it looked originally. This makes Polyneon thread a perfect fit for medical offices, hotels, restaurants and other establishments seeking to promote their brand identity through logo wear.