timcok8

On 8/16/2022 at 2:42 AM, exchemist said:

While it is true that UV does eventually weaken fabrics, this is usually noticeable only for things such as curtains and sofas that may be exposed to a lot of direct sunlight for hours every day, for years on end. For clothes and bed linen, i.e. the items on your washing line, you can usually ignore this, as the exposure time is a few hours per week at most. Most clothes wear out for other reasons.

Regarding dryers, it is noticeable that a significant amount of fluff collects on the filter of a dryer every time you run it. This is no doubt partly human skin cells, but a lot is fibres from the fabric. My guess would be this will have more of a weakening effect than sunlight on a clothes line. 

In my opinion, clothes dried outside smell fresher - and of course it is more environmentally friendly as well. So personally I always dry clothes outside, when the weather permits. I make an exception for towels, which are much softer if dried in a dryer.

 

I think uv does not make clothes week but they will make them shrink a lot. For rayon i have seen this a lot.