Nothing says summer fun like personalized tie dye beach towels! These tie dye kids towels are perfect for the pool or a beach outing. Kids will love tie dying these colorful towels and you will be surprised how easy it is to spray tie dye a towel!

Personalized Tie Dye Beach Towel - finished DIY project with rainbow tie dye and personalized with name Andrew
Add your name to make a personalized tie dye beach towel…never lose another towel at the pool!

You’ll Love These Tie Dye Personalized Beach Towels

This DIY tie dye project is so easy that the kids can get involved.  You can customize the name on the towel and make one for every member of the family with different tie dye pattern colors.

At first, I was sure making a tie dye towel would be too difficult.  Back in the ‘olden days’ of tie dye it was often incredibly messy and the results were unpredictable.  What I love about today’s tie dye is that when you get the right tools, today we are using spray tie dye, you will end up with something that you love and it is surprisingly easy.

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What you need to make Personalized Beach Towels

That is one of the reasons why we love this tie dye idea to do with your kids.  They will love the process fabric dye.

Supplies Needed to Make a Tie Dye Towel with Your Name

Tulip One-Step Spray Dye Kit - 7 pack shown in package - this is one of the supplies for tie dye towel
Using a spray dye kit makes tie dye a breeze!

Spray Dye vs Tie Dye: What’s best for making personalized towels for kids?

We used the Tulip One-Step Spray Dye Kit for this project.

  • Spray tie dye is incredibly kid-friendly. You just spray fabric dye right where you want the color to appear.
  • This spray dye kit has everything you need for tie dye projects, including gloves and rubber bands.
  • With a traditional tie dye, it would be harder to control the color and the mess.  I am a big fan of the spray dye for tie dye projects like this personalized name towel.

Best towel to use for making Tie Dye Towels

We went to the source and asked Tulip Tie Dye what the best towel would be:

“White 100% cotton towels” work best.

Tie Dye Your Summer

We have always used 100% cotton white towels.  The second thing that is very important is the size of the towel.  Traditionally, beach towels are larger than 30 x 60 inches to be officially beach towels.  I like mine to be a little larger than that.

Favorite White Cotton Towels for Tie Dye from Amazon:

How to make a Tie Dye Beach Towel with name

Step 1

Cover your work surface with the disposable table cloth. This makes clean-up so easy because tie dye can get a little messy.

Personalized Tie Dye Beach Towel step 2 - write the name in duct tape on the towel
With duct tape, add your desired name or personalization to the white beach towel.

Step 2

Lay your white cotton towel out and use the duct tape to write your child’s name across the front.

Personalized Tie Dye Beach Towel - step 3 with gloved hands start to spray on the tie dye
Start to spray the dye onto the towel.

Step 3

Now comes the fun part! Put on your gloves and start spraying the fabric dye colors onto the towel.

Tie Dye Tip: We wanted a rainbow look for our towel, so we started in one corner and moved from color to color.  The kids tie dye kit we used had all the colors in one package to make it really simple.

Personalized Tie Dye Beach Towel - tip - start at one end with a color and work toward the other
Think ahead what you want the colors to look like on the finished personalized beach towel.

Tie Dye Tip: We sprayed pretty lightly so that it would have more of an ombre look.

Personalized Tie Dye Beach Towel - tip - to create an ombre look you want lightly colored transitions
If you want light color transitions, make the color lighter to layer on the next light color for an ombre look.

(Optional) Step 4

If you have a thick cotton towel, the colors may not bleed through the towel.  In that case, turn the towel over and repeat spraying the colors on the back in the same pattern.

Personalized Tie Dye Beach Towel step 4 - allow to air dry
The towel will air dry if you are patient!

Step 5

Allow to air dry.

Step 6

Once both sides are dry, remove the tape and rinse the towel in cold water.

Tie Dye Beach Towel completed with the name 'Andrew'
Look at our completed personalized beach towel…ready for the pool!

Finished Spray Tie Dyed Beach Towel

Some of the color will run onto the white letters — that’s ok! It will still be much lighter than the rest of the towel and it looks really cool!

How to Wash Kids Beach Towels

  1. Wash separately in a large load of hottest water suitable for fabric and a small amount of laundry soap.
  2. Dry separately.
  3. Wash and dry separately for the first few washes.

Watch Our Video to See the Steps for Making Name Beach Towel with Spray Tie Dye

Check out the live video tutorial we did a couple of years ago for this project.  It has been seen by almost 300K people!  This personalized beach towels project has become one of our most popular DIY ideas on Kids Activities Blog.

We had so much fun making this personalized tie dye beach towel over at our Quirky Momma Facebook page! <–If you would rather watch the video on FB, just click!

Yield: 1

Tie Dye Personalized Beach Towels

How to tie dye a personalized beach towel for kids - Kids Activities Blog fb

This easy spray tie dye technique can be used with kids to customize their own tie dye beach towel with their name! This tie dye pattern is so easy, you will want to make one for every member of the family for summer.

Active Time 30 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Difficulty Medium
Estimated Cost $15-$20

Materials

  • Tulip One-Step Spray Dye Kit 7-Pack
  • White terry cloth beach towel

Tools

  • Duct tape
  • Scissors
  • Disposable table cloth -or use plastic garbage bags to cover surface

Instructions

  1. Cover your work surface completely with plastic.
  2. Lay white 100% cotton towel out and use duct tape to write child's name on front.
  3. Put on gloves and grab the spray tie dye kit.
  4. Start with one color and spray on towel in desired pattern. To achieve an ombre tie dye look, spray lightly so the combination of two colors can be seen between stripes.
  5. Add color to back of towel if thick.
  6. Dry.
  7. Remove tape.
  8. Rinse towel in cold water.

More Tie Dye Fun from Kids Activities Blog

Here are 22 fun beach activities for kids!

What name will you put on your personalized tie dye towel?



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22 Comments

    1. Hi, Jody! If I have an entire batch of tie dyed items that are all made with the same colors, I usually do. Otherwise, separate them to be safe for that initial wash!

    1. Hi, Cyndi! That is a good question! Unfortunately, I’m not sure! Maybe try doing a test run with a white hand towel and a small phrase on it, just to see what happens?