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Garment Storage Basics - Page 2 Does light damage textiles? Yes - especially ultraviolet light. It can fade colors, turn whites to yellow, and even weaken the molecular structure of the individual fibers in some delicate fabrics. The best way to visualize this process is to use an analogy. Light can be thought of as countless tiny bullets, smaller than atoms. The amount of light (how bright) is how many bullets; the color of the light is how powerful the bullets are. The familiar rainbow spectrum of visible light spans from red to violet. Red light is least powerful - violet light is most powerful. Ultraviolet light has a lot more energy than visible light. (The bullets are magnums!) So for a given amount of light, ultraviolet can do a lot more damage. (more details)
So does this mean that you have to be paranoid and keep your precious garments forever in the dark, never to be seen again? No, not at all. It's all a matter of scale. According to studies done at the National Physical Laboratory for the Historic Royal
Palaces of London1, the damage light does is
cumulative. There is no magic level at which a garment is either safe or
unsafe. Damage is directly proportional to how much exposure to light the fabric
receives and the energy level (color) of the light involved. Keep down the
proportion of time the garment spends in the light, especially high energy light such as
ultraviolet, and damage will be minimal. 1 Copyright © 1996 - 2007 Sentinel Archiving, Inc. |