Sampling and lab dips

Sampling in home textiles is a colour process before it is a product process, and it runs in a fixed order. Skipping a stage does not save time, it moves the risk to bulk.

Lab dips first. A lab dip is a small swatch dyed to your shade for approval. Send a physical reference rather than a screen colour or a printed number, because dye is matched to a physical thing. Approve or reject under one agreed light source and write down which one: a shade that matches in daylight and fails under shop lighting is a real and common failure, and it has a name, metamerism. Expect more than one round.

A strike off for anything printed. That is a sample of the actual print on the actual cloth, showing the repeat, the register and the depth of colour. A print approved from artwork alone has not been approved.

Then the sealed sample. The physical piece, made in your construction, in your approved shade, to your size grid, signed by both sides and held by both sides. Bulk is judged against it and against nothing else. A photograph does not settle an argument and an email saying approved does not either.

And a wash test on that sample before bulk. Wash it the way your customer will, the number of times you claim on the label, and measure it again. This is where shrinkage, shade change and pilling appear while they are still cheap. If you do only one thing beyond the sealed sample, do this.

The sample charge and the turnaround belong to the mill. They vary by product, by how many colours you are dipping and by season, so any published average would be wrong for your order. Ask for both in writing when you ask for the quote, and budget sampling as a line and as a period of weeks rather than as a formality.

What a bad answer looks like: “lab dips are no problem, we will send them quickly” with no charge, no number of rounds and no turnaround date in writing, or a charge that appears on the pro forma only after the dips have been approved.