It might be interesting for you to know there are also naturally colored cotton, including green, red and several shades of brown, other than naturally colored cotton (white and cream).

This kind of cotton fiber is shorter and slightly weaker than normal cotton which make them unsuitable for machine spinning but it has softer feel and nice smell.

Production of this cotton is not very common yet because it requires special harvest equipment, make this step more expensive than white cotton.

This kind of colored cotton has been grown in Africa, Central Asia and south America.

The color in these fibers is due to the existence of natural pigments in them. For instance, the green color comes from Caffeic acid, one of the Cinnmic acid derivatives, in the wax layer of cotton fibers. While the brown cotton fibers get their color from tannin vacuoles in the fibers lumen.

Experimental results show naturally colored cotton fibers, especially green fibers, are more UV-protective than normal cotton and have great sun protection features. On the other hand, using this pigmented cotton leads to decreasing cost of dying process as they do not need post treatment of waste water.