Like all trends eventually matching your toilet paper to the rest of your bathroom eventually died out. By the mid-1980’s it became very difficult to find colored toilet paper anymore.
Not only did the pastel colors and matchy-matchy home decor styles of the 1950’s become unfashionable but there were concerns about the dyes in the toilet paper being bad for the environment.
The main reason colored toilet paper stopped being made is because the dyes used to make them were harmful to people’s skins. Apart from the fact that they were expensive to manufacture, there was also a tremendous change in bathroom style which phased them out.
Toilet paper has the color white because it’s bleached. Without the bleach, the paper would be brownish in color. Companies don’t make coloured toilet paper anymore because dying the bleached paper lots would cost them more money. This would eventually mean that toilet paper will become expensive.
Chlorine bleaches paper really white and also removes the woody compound called lignin from wood pulp, which causes the yellowing of paper when it’s exposed to sunlight, as happens with newspapers. (Incidentally, newspapers are chlorine-free and CAN go in your compost bins, worm farms and gardens)
Most companies use a chlorine bleaching process to make the toilet tissue white. Chlorine can produce dioxins and other cancer-causing pollutants, which is not only bad for the environment but also our health.
Toilet paper companies such as Who Gives a Crap and Reel Paper sell toilet paper made from bamboo, not trees.You don’t have to worry about chemicals in your bamboo toilet paper because they are unbleached and not chemically washed.
Yes! You can still buy colored toilet paper. A quick search on Amazon brings up toilet paper available in every color of the rainbow. You can even get patterned toilet paper or paper with the president’s face on it.
The toilet paper appeared in France in the 60’s and was originally greyish. The colour pink was chosen by marketers because people associates it culturally with purity and mostly with the softness of a healthy young skin. In Germany, they use patterns, usually flowers. Other countries favor blue paper.