Tie-Dye Calculator
Dye volume and fold pattern from garment type and design.
About this calculator
Fiber-reactive tie-dye (the Procion MX style most home dyers use) needs three things sized correctly: dye solution volume, dye powder per color, and soda ash for the pre-soak — and this calculator scales all three from how many garments you're dyeing and how many colors you're mixing. It assumes each garment absorbs roughly 0.7 mL of dye solution per gram of dry fabric weight, a middle-of-the-road figure for how saturated a squeeze-bottle application gets a cotton garment (a 200 g t-shirt works out to about 140 mL of total solution). That total solution volume is then split evenly across however many colors you're using, and each color's dye powder requirement comes from multiplying its solution volume by your target concentration in grams per liter — lighter pastel work sits around 5-10 g/L, medium saturation 10-20 g/L, and deep, saturated colors 20-40 g/L.
Separately, the soda ash pre-soak is sized off total water needed to submerge all garments, estimated at 3 liters per garment, times your soda ash concentration (100 g/L, or about one cup per gallon, is the standard fiber-reactive recipe). A few things worth knowing: this splits solution evenly across colors regardless of how much area each color actually covers in your fold pattern, so a design that's mostly one background color with small accent spots will need you to rebalance the color split manually. It also doesn't account for dye wasted in application (drips, oversaturation) or extra solution needed for touch-ups, so treat the totals as a solid starting point rather than an exact shopping list.
Inputs
Results
Total dye solution (mL)
700
How to Use This Calculator
- Enter Garment weight (g), Number of garments, and Number of colors.
- Set Dye concentration (g/L) and Soda ash concentration (g/L).
- Review the Total dye solution (mL) result.
- Use Solution per color (mL) and Dye powder per color (g) to inform your decision.
How the result changes with Garment weight (g)
| Garment weight (g) | Total dye solution (mL) |
|---|---|
| 100 | 350 |
| 150 | 525 |
| 300 | 1,050 |
| 500 | 1,750 |
What each input means
- Garment weight (g)
- Dry weight of one garment. T-shirt: ~200g, sweatshirt: ~400g, bed sheet: ~500g.
- Number of garments
- Total garments to dye in this session.
- Number of colors
- How many different dye colors to prepare.
- Dye concentration (g/L)
- Dye powder per liter of solution. Pastel: 5-10, medium: 10-20, dark: 20-40 g/L.
- Soda ash concentration (g/L)
- Soda ash (sodium carbonate) for pre-soak. Standard: 100 g/L (1 cup per gallon).
What each result means
- Total dye solution (mL)
- Total volume of dye solution to prepare across all colors.
- Solution per color (mL)
- Volume of dye solution to mix for each color.
- Dye powder per color (g)
- Weight of dye powder for each color's solution.
- Total dye powder (g)
- Total dye powder needed across all colors.
- Soda ash needed (g)
- Soda ash for the pre-soak solution.
- Soak water (L)
- Water needed for the soda ash pre-soak.
How this is calculated
Worked example, using the default values
- Identify Input Parameters4 parametersGarment weight (g) = 200, Number of garments = 5, Number of colors = 3, Dye concentration (g/L) = 15 = 5 input(s) provided
- Calculate Total dye solutionTotal dye solution = solutionPerGarmentMl * numGarments700 = 700
- Calculate Solution per colorSolution per color = totalSolutionMl / numColors233 = 233
- Calculate Dye powder per colorDye powder per color = (solutionPerColorMl / 1000) * dyeConcentrationGPerL3.5 = 3.5
Engine last updated . Checked against 1 independently-derived test — how we verify calculators. Built by Paul Gunder, a software engineer, not a licensed financial, medical, or legal professional.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the calculator split dye solution evenly across colors even though my design isn't evenly split?
The engine has no input for how much fabric area each color covers, so it divides total solution volume (garment weight times the 0.7 mL/g absorption factor, times number of garments) by the number of colors and treats every color as needing an equal share. If your pattern is mostly one background color with small accent spots, mentally reallocate the totals — give the dominant color a larger share of the total solution and powder, and scale the minor accent colors down accordingly.
Where does the 0.7 mL per gram absorption factor come from, and should I adjust it for my technique?
It's a fixed constant in the calculator representing a typical squeeze-bottle application on cotton, landing in the middle of the 0.5-1.0 mL/g range you'd see across different application intensities. A lighter, more controlled application (fine detail work) would actually use less solution than this estimates, while a heavily saturated, soak-style application could use more — since the calculator can't take that as an input, treat the total as a reasonable starting point and adjust up or down based on how saturated you know your technique runs.
How is the soda ash pre-soak water amount determined, and does it change with dye concentration?
Soak water is calculated purely from garment count — 3 liters per garment — regardless of dye concentration, number of colors, or garment weight, since the pre-soak happens before dyeing and just needs enough soda ash solution to submerge everything. So doubling your number of garments doubles the soak water and soda ash needed, but changing your dye concentration per color has no effect on the pre-soak numbers at all.
If I'm dyeing garments of different weights, how should I use this calculator?
The calculator takes a single garment weight and multiplies it by the number of garments, so it assumes every garment in the batch is the same size. For a mixed batch — say some t-shirts and some sweatshirts — run the calculator separately for each garment type using its own weight and garment count, then add the resulting solution, powder, and soda ash totals together.
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