The Best Tie-Dye Kits

The T-shirts we dyed with the Tulip One-Step Tie-Dye Kit were the brightest and boldest, with very little effort or mess. The small squeeze bottles are easy to handle and come prefilled with powdered dye, so all you have to do is add warm water and shake carefully to combine. Also included are two pairs of basic disposable gloves and 20 just-right rubber bands (stretchy enough to work with but strong enough to secure the shape). In our test we found that you can achieve vibrant tie-dye designs using a moderate amount of dye: It took approximately one-third of the bottle to cover one T-shirt (the size of the shirt had a negligible effect on the amount of dye needed), so three bottles of dye should yield approximately nine T-shirts. If you want to tie-dye more than nine items, you can buy a kit that comes with more bottles or purchase additional tie-dye refill packs and reuse the squeeze bottles. And since the dye needs to set for only six to eight hours before you rinse and wash, you can create a beautiful tie-dye project from start to finish in a single day. Compare that with the Jacquard Tie Dye Kit we tested, which takes longer and is more involved, requiring the extra step of presoaking in soda ash and setting the dye for 12 to 24 hours.