There is growing interest in making significant portions of the domestic outdoor furniture soft goods production competitive with overseas production as this seasonal, bulky product could be produced more effectively closer to the market. It is anticipated that domestic production can be increased by implementing new technologies in fabric printing operations to enable a) the cost-effective domestic production required for success in servicing the retail sector; b) new product innovations not feasible using current production technologies in this category, and c) a flexible and responsive supply chain capable of quick response to customer market trends. The development of high-speed digital printers, capable of printing 70 m/min, has made this process competitive with rotary screen printing in terms of speed and cost, while offering a competitive advantage when printing shorter runs or multiple colorways. Thus, digitally printed fabrics for outdoor furnishings would offer a game changing strategy for the domestic textile complex. With this in mind, the development of cost-effective digitally printed outdoor fabrics with high UV stability that matches an end user's color gamut and are readily available and responsive to demand activated point of sale is a logical undertaking.

This research sought to develop an understanding of currently used ink jet printing colorants and color management strategy for the outdoor market. The author studied how colors are digitally mixed and color is controlled and matched. The Delphi method was used to investigate current color gamut analysis methods, a critical component of color management systems (CMS). Ink jet printing experts were interviewed, to understand how they manage color and their process for analyzing and comparing color gamuts. A significant result of this study was the development of a four-stage process model for color gamut analysis, color management and print quality evaluation for textile ink jet printing. This study also uncovered an industry initiative toward the improvement of color management systems (CMS) for more accurate color matching, a need to stabilize variables in the manufacturing process, and a need to create standards for related tests and evaluations. The study also revealed new CMS software and technologies developed for ink formulation and pre/post-treatment methods to facilitate high quality production in textile ink jet printing.

To test and validate the process model, two experimental studies were conducted. The first study compared and analyzed the color gamut of pre-treated versus un-treated polyester and cotton substrates using a six-color pigment set. The second study compared and analyzed the color gamut and print quality of two different colorant sets, a seven-color disperse set and an eight-color pigment set. The process model was found to be effective for evaluating the two experimental studies. Results of these studies showed that 1) commercially available fabric pre-treatments significantly enhance color gamut for pigment-based ink-jet inks, 2) disperse dye based inks provide a larger color gamut and better crock fastness than pigment-based inks, and 3) pigment inks afford better lightfastness than disperse dye based inks.

To assist on-going efforts to enhance the lightfastness of colorants in disperse-based inks for textile ink jet printing, a series of analytical methods were used to characterize the molecular and excited state properties of disperse dyes for modern day ink-jet inks. Results showed that lightfastness was improved by using certain dye mixtures and by eliminating singlet oxygen formation and excited state lifetimes.