It's An Ink War - Hairspray VS A Professional Dry Cleaner

In the dry cleaning industry, there are multiple brands and formulations of ink removers. Our company uses P.O.G, Alba-Ink, and Release to remove most of the ink. The last trace of dye is typically removed using a very specialized type of bleach called Titanium Stripper. This last step is what separates a good dry cleaner, from a great dry cleaner!

For comparison, I purchased seven different brands of hairspray each with a different formulation. To simplify the experiment, I tested each hairspray separately to determine which one was the most effective. Aussie brand was the winner, and it is what I used for the remainder of our analysis.

To test our different stain removal agents, I rounded up two identical white cotton shirts. I vigorously wrote tally marks representing each pen brand on both shirts in all three colors (Black, Blue and Red).

The ink was set using an iron to mimic the shirt having been washed and dried.

To test the hairspray's performance, I sprayed one shirt with the Aussie hairspray. I avoided using any of my professional tools to best imitate what someone would be doing at home. On some of the ink, the hairspray began to attack the stain right away. You can begin to see the ink dye releasing from its binding agent and start to float on the shirt.

I continued to work the ink with hairspray; spraying the hairspray onto the shirt and blotting with a plain white cotton towel.

Finally, the shirt is washed to remove the hairspray and see what ink remains. It's important for me to point out, this plain white cotton dress shirt is very durable. It's construction and fabric type allow me to perform this experiment with few consequences. However, if I had used a garment made of a more delicate fiber or weave, the glue in the hairspray would cause irrevocable damage.

While that shirt washes, its time to work the ink with my professional ink removing agents. I apply a combination of Release and Alba-Ink to the stains. This combination quickly begins to break down the binder that holds the ink dye together.

Next, I gently "work the stain" using a bone spatula. This gentle motion works the ink removers into the fibers of the shirt to slowly breakup the ink. I continued this process until no more ink can be removed.

The shirt is then "flushed" with steam to force the remaining ink out of the shirt and to remove the spotting agents. At this point, all the ink has been removed and only a shadow of die remains.

To remove the last trace of dye, the shirt must be bleached. Now, the bleach I am using is NOT Clorox. Without boring you, there are six different types of bleaches available to a professional dry cleaner. Some bleaches add oxygen to a stain, while others remove oxygen. This process actually changes the color of the "stain" or, in our case, the dye. If done properly, the last trace of the ink will not be visible to the human eye.

After a quick wash, I will be able to compare the results of our little experiment. I can't wait to see how hairspray performs as compared to professional ink removers.

Wow! The results are actually very surprising to me! The hairspray outperformed my expectations in a big way. The hairspray lightened four of the ink pens to varying degrees. One ink was almost completely removed. The other three inks were essentially unaffected by the hairspray. Check out the detailed results for hairspray below.