Ballroom Dresses – How to Store and Clean Them

You have a closet full of beautiful ballroom dresses and you want to keep them looking that way. Making sure that they stay clean and fresh does take some planning. Unlike some items of clothing, you do need to take special care of them to ensure that you can still use your ballroom dresses dance after dance.

There are a couple of things to take into account when you are thinking about how best to store your ballroom dresses. First of all, you need to make sure that the color stays as true to the original as it is possible to. Natural light is the enemy in this case. The best thing to do is to get a dark-colored plastic cover which will protect the dress from fading. If you suspend the dress in its cover in a place that has plenty of space around it, this will help to reduce creasing of the garment. Something also to watch out for is mildew. This may grow on your dresses and wreck them if they are kept in a damp spot. So, a dry place is best and also open the cover to let some air circulation.

Moving on from how to store our ballroom dance dresses, let’s now take a look at the best way to care for them in terms of keeping them clean and well-presented. The care instructions supplied by the manufacturer or your dress-maker are an excellent place to start.

The chances are that if they are practice dancewear dresses with no embellishments or trimmings, then they might be machine-washable and almost certainly hand-washable. In either event, wash in cold water with a mild detergent. For competition dancing clothes, again if they are not finished with decorations such as stones and beads, you can try a hand- or a very cool machine-wash – no more than 30 degrees Centigrade – to avoid shrinkage. Generally-speaking, it’s all right to machine-wash fabrics such as georgette and Lycra, commonly used in ballroom dance dresses.

Pre-wash treatments can be effective for heavy staining. You have to be especially careful if ballroom dancing dresses have dark-colored satin bias binding because this can stain the fabric. So you have to be meticulous in making sure that the binding and the material do not touch one another while still damp. This may look like overkill, but you will be happy you did it. Now if your ballroom dress is decorated, then your should never wash or even dry clean it. The risk is that any stones will be scratched and lose their sparkle. What is more, it’s even possible for the glue to dissolve. You can, obviously, spot clean with a brush.

So what exactly do you do if you can’t wash your dress, but you want to freshen it up and possibly eliminate the creases? It might be possible to hand-wash the body suit in its own. In this instance, you have got to do it with the dress turned inside out and be mindful to use cold water and mild detergent only. Rinse out in cold water and drip dry. If you are not able to wash the any part of the garment, then you could try hanging it in a steamy place, for example, from the shower rail.

Washing ballroom dresses is always fraught with danger. If your garment is particularly heavy when wet, it is probably best to place it over a clothes horse to give it some extra support and help prevent stretching. On the other hand, if it is not too heavy with water, it could be hung over your bath to drip dry.

Now let’s examine the tricky subject of ironing. If you can avoid it, then you should do so. Again, pay close attention to the maker’s instructions. Synthetic fabrics are notorious for burning easily, so use a very cool temperature.

It is always a little worrying when you have invested time and money into buying ballroom dresses, that you may not be able to look after them properly. However, if you take note of the care instructions and the advice given in this article, then you stand a good chance of keeping your ballroom dresses both looking beautiful and very wearable for longer.

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