Dyed with the help of nature

Mountains and sea, earth and sand, trees and plants. People have always been fascinated by nature’s colours and harnessed them to dye clothes and other textiles. We’ve revived this tradition and use agricultural waste to give the soft BLOMNÄSA bedlinen set for cot its beautiful light-green earthy tone.

Catherine Larsson, one of our material experts within textiles, knows pretty much all there is to know about textile dyeing techniques. Lately she’s been learning more about plant sourced dyes. “Textile dyes are usually oil-based, but the dye we use for BLOMNÄSA is based on natural and renewable resources from agricultural waste. In this case from the saw palmetto plant,” Catherine explains.

New use for waste

The saw palmetto is a small palm whose stalks and fan-shaped leaves contain extract that the herbal industry uses. Instead of discarding or burning the waste, you can grind it into a powder and use it as one of the main ingredients in textile dye. It means adapting to nature’s beautiful pallete, and here we get a light-green tone. Catherine sums up the gains: “These plant-based dyes have the same quality as man-made synthetic dyes, but the raw material is derived from agricultural waste.”

Reviving a colourful tradition

The development of BLOMNÄSA is one step towards using more renewable materials and being less dependent on oil-based chemicals. “We don’t always have the answers, but we always want to try to become better. In this case we revive an older tradition from when people didn’t let anything go to waste and were inventive when it came to recycling and reusing what nature has provided.”