Can you remember a time in the distant past when you’d reach for a roll of pastel toilet paper? The days of colored toilet paper are long gone. The current generation is only familiar with plain, old white TP, but once there was a more colorful era.
Colored toilet paper began in the 1950s. It was the heyday of color coordination, when newly manufactured homes came complete with bathroom sinks, tubs, and commodes in a matching color scheme, often pink, green, or powder blue. The women of the ’50s expected nothing less, and the idea of a “color neutral” bathroom likely would have just seemed boring. So, of course, why wouldn’t the toilet paper match the color scheme?
Photo: Facebook/Daren Whatley
In the ’50s and through the ’70s, toilet paper was popular in a variety of soft pastel colors. In those days, folks wiped their bottoms with TP in bright hues of pink, lavender, yellow, powder blue, and green, just to name a few. Whatever happened to those colorful times?
The popularity of colored TP declined steeply in the 1980s. There were a number of contributing factors to the decline, including fears about the safety of pastel dyes in contact with sensitive human skin, as well as environmental worries regarding the dyes (though one blog claims that actual evidence for this can be hard to find). Dyed paper also cost more to produce than simple white TP.
Photo: Facebook/June Pennza Vanatta
However, perhaps the main reason was simply a change in aesthetics from the color schemes of the ’60s and ’70s to the color-neutral modern era. Bathrooms went white, and there hasn’t been much color since.
One company still manufactures colorful TP, and they’ve got a celebrity fan. Kris Jenner is said to be a fan of Renovo’s black toilet paper. The company assures customers that its products are “dermatologically and gynecologically tested,” so if your bottom is feeling a tad nostalgic, now you can relive the heydays of colorful toilet paper.
