We Used Purple Shampoo To Remove Yellow Bedding Stains With Underwhelming Results

Yellow stains on otherwise white bedding are a massive eyesore. These marks can come from sweat, spilled liquids, pet urine, blood, and more. Regardless of how they were made, they can be pretty tricky to coax out of the fabric — especially if they've been there for some time. However, Tiktoker @whatjoknows claims to have found a trick for dealing with yellow stains using a violet-toning shampoo intended to remove yellow tones from blonde hair.

Like most people, we have a collection of bedding littered with mysterious marks (typically yellow stains). We usually cover them up using a carefully positioned throw blanket or flip them over to their clean side. Hopefully, by trying this shampoo hack, we can eliminate the stains on our white comforter and duvet cover, which have suffered a few spills over time. Jo's TikTok makes the tip look foolproof as she removes the sweat stains from a white dress. Could the same trick work on our old yellowing sheets?

According to the video showing this trick, all you need to remove yellow stains from your bed sheets is purple shampoo and a package of soda crystals. (We bought the same brands Jo used in her tutorial just to be safe.) From Amazon, our 2-pound bag of Dri-Pak Soda Crystals was $12, and an 8.4 fluid ounce bottle of Fudge Professional Clean Blonde Violet-Toning Shampoo was about $17. We also used vinyl gloves to protect our hands, which we picked up for about $6 at Walmart.

The best place to test this stain-removing hack was in our bathroom. To set up, we gathered our cotton comforter from West Pacific Home Fashions and our M&Meagle duvet cover. After folding one blanket to save space in the small room and spreading out the other, the yellow stains were easily identified. Only a few were large and dark enough to spot again and again on the bedding, which made it a breeze to pick out where the experiment would start. With our purple shampoo and gloves nearby, it was finally time for us to take the plunge. From the bottle, the shampoo was very dark. Spreading it out on the fabric lightened it somewhat, but we had to trust the process just as Jo did.

We applied the purple shampoo to each yellow spot using a gloved hand to work the product in. Once our blankets had been smeared with the brightly colored goo, they were hung over the side of the bathtub to wait for the shampoo to work. Unfortunately, the TikTok instructions for how long to leave the purple shampoo on the fabric were unclear. However, the back of the shampoo bottle indicated that the solution shouldn't be left on one's hair for any longer than 5 minutes. So, we decided to let the product sit for just that long on our bedding to avoid creating prominent purple stains in the wake of yellow ones.

When the timer went off, it was time to run the fabric under warm water and rinse out the extra shampoo. After wringing them out, they showed some purple staining. We then brought our damp bedding to the laundry room, applied washing soda to the fabric, and ran the washing machine on the regular cycle. Now, we had to wait and see if this technique would actually work — or if it would just create more stains.

Taking the two pieces of bedding out of the dryer, we were glad to see no purple was left whatsoever. However, after bringing them to our bedroom to get a better look, it was clear that the stains hadn't been removed completely. To this hack's credit, the stains were pretty old, and it seems they were corrected just a bit. However, the experiment was still a dud. During the shampoo application process, we smeared the purple toner on several persisting yellow marks between the two blankets, but they were still noticeable in the end.

For the price of the materials needed for this hack, we would recommend that you avoid this one. If you are desperate to remove a yellow stain on your white sheets, consider alternative methods that use kitchen pantry stain removers like baking soda, salt, and hydrogen peroxide. These are much less expensive and likely more effective, as we've achieved some seemingly miraculous results with them in the past.