What is Depth of Shade?

In my Tutorial for Dye Stock I mentioned Depth of Shade, or DOS. What is it? Why do I need to know about it? How is it helpful to me? These are all great questions! Lets talk about what DOS is!

When we speak of dyeing fibre Depth of Shade refers to the VALUE of the color we want to achieve, Essentially how light or dark that color is, or how much saturation there is. So a DOS of .5 will give a pale color, for example baby blue, while a 5 will give a dark, intense color, for example navy blue. Knowing how much dye stock you need to achieve that color is imperative if you want to create repeatable colors, but it is also important just to create the combination you have in your head without many trial and error sessions. That is unless you prefer standing over a simmering dye vat instead of using that beautiful yarn you made.

There is a very simple formula for determining how much dye stock to use for the DOS you want to achieve, but it does require some math.

 Weight of dye goods (fibre) × depth of shade ÷ strength of dye stock = amount of dye stock

Lets compare what we might need to create the baby and navy blues mentioned above. I will assume we are dyeing a standard 100g skein.

Baby Blue:

100g x .5 ÷ 1 (for our 1% dye stock) = 50g dye stock.

Navy Blue:

100g x 5  ÷ 1 = 500g dye stock. 

So we can see that intense saturated colors take considerably more dye to create. Several other factors to consider are that not all fibre will absorb ALL the dye, for example I have found super wash to be more receptive to intense colors than non super wash wool, and silks to be more receptive than that. The base color of the fibre is also a consideration. Another is that some dyes need a higher DOS to look the same intensity as another. For example, I have found that yellow is very intensely colored, while black takes more dye to achieve the same saturation. Dyeing a baby blue on a taupe colored yarn will give a duller and slightly darker look than it would on a white yarn, but using color theory and over dyeing can be a great way to perk up those yarns that you may hate the colors, but were available at a great price! Thats a topic for another post though. 



Brittany