Colored cloth diapers don’t absorb better than undyed diapers. They don’t give your baby a better fit.

So, what is the point of colored diapers?

We make colored cloth diapers for 5 reasons.

5. Happy Baby

Once your babies are old enough to recognize and love colors, you will probably find that they have preferences. Cloth diapering becomes so much easier when your toddler looks forward to diaper changes with a favorite color.

4. Happy Parent

Colors are fun. When you see a color you like, you add a little joy to your task. You smile while your baby is watching you. Your baby smiles back. Diaper changing time becomes a time of happy smiles. If you consistently make a stinky face while you are changing diapers, your child won’t enjoy that time quite so much.

3. Happy Diaper Maker

Our work space is gorgeous! We have colors everywhere. In the same way color adds a little joy to a diaper change, it adds joy to diaper making time. Beautiful colors make for a pleasant work environment.

2. Low-impact Dye

Sustainability matters to us. We love the idea of using natural dyes, but we know you demand color-fast dyes. Without high-impact mordants, nasty chemicals that help the pigments attach to fibers, most natural dyes won’t give you bright, lasting colors. Fiber-reactive dyes create a permanent bond with the fibers, and the dyes are fixed on cotton with simple soda ash.

It also takes less energy to use fiber-reactive dyes, since room temperature to body temperature water does the job. We chose to balance color and impact with fiber-reactive dyes.

1. Our Customer Asked for Them

We thought Firefly Diapers would be all about the plain, undyed diaper. Our sister company, Fuzbaby, is all about color. We loved Firefly Diapers for their excellent functionality. Well, it turns out that not everyone wants just function. You want beautiful diapers! Our customers asked, nudged, requested, and demanded Firefly Quick Dry Diapers in colors, so we made them. Then, our customers collected colored diapers.

Usually, Quick Dry Color Diapers are undyed on the inside, but we sometimes use up small pieces of fabric and lulls in production to create Firefly Quick Dry Color Clown diapers, with colors in every one of the six pieces and trimmed with organic cotton thread. These popular, colored diapers are in stock now.

All of our regular diapers are currently in stock — even Extra Small (preemie) and Extra Large (toddlers). This doesn’t happen very often. We are usually running to catch up, but we’ve been pushing production harder recently. We arrived!

We’re here, we said. Now what? Have some fun! We created colorful Clown Diapers. We used the colors we had on hand, which happen to be strong primary and secondary colors. Check out our home page for swatches.

Right now, in the moment of my writing, we have a bunch of Clown Diapers in Small ($24), Medium ($26), and Large ($26). We will update stock both here and the Firefly Diapers home page.

Call to order: 800/597-0561. We ask you to call to order these so we can be completely accurate about what stock we have left. You call, it’s yours.

UPDATE: Since there are just a few of these beautiful Clown Diapers left, we’ve posted them for sale on our website. You don’t have to call — though you are always welcome to call to place any order. ORDER CLOWN DIAPERS. (If you don’t see Clown Diapers and a nice “Buy It” button on our home page, all of the diapers are gone.)

We are so happy to see our shelves bursting with new diapers in a big rainbow of organic cotton colors. It has been a while since Firefly Diapers has stocked quite so many colors at once in Quick Dry Color diapers.

Why use color diapers? Obviously, color doesn’t have anything to do with function. Color is about feeling. I feel happy when I am surrounded by colors. If I smile when I change my baby’s diaper, my baby smiles back at me. The papa of Firefly Diapers suggests (after one too many home decorating shows) that colorful cloth diapers should be marketed as a decorative element for babies’ rooms. I’m not sure I would go that far, but I do love to see that rainbow of color when I walk into our stock room.

We make these low-impact dyed colors available in our three most popular sizes — Small, Medium, and Large. Available colors vary between the sizes, but (as of writing) there are still colors across the spectrum available in every size.

Some of our customers collect rainbows of organic cotton diapers. You can see customers’ photos of their collections here. If you have considered collecting a rainbow of diapers for your baby, this is the time to do it. We will likely restock the colors in bigger blocks of single colors.

And, as always, if you have requests for colors, let us know. We love to hear customer suggestions.

Firefly Quick Dry Color Clown Diaper peeking out of its new friend, a Fuzbaby Fuzbomb cover.

Six colors in all. It does make a parent smile.

I know that pull of a beautiful organic cotton cloth diaper.

This week, a long-time customer—one of the first customers of the original Firefly Diapers—made a nostalgia purchase. After years of cloth diapering several children, her baby is about to leave diapers. She’s revisiting her favorite brands. What a nice idea. She thanked me for not calling her “the diaper nerd that I am.” I wouldn’t do that, unless I called myself one, too.

How does one get caught up in the desire for beauty in what is really just a mundane tool to deal with a simple process? It’s just a diaper. But the thousands of women buying diapers in the Diaper Underground know it isn’t just a diaper. For me, it is an amusing canvas. A colorful diaper makes me smile. And I like to say to customers that when a diaper makes you smile as you change your baby’s diaper, when your baby is completely focused on your face, you both smile. That has to be good.

Today, as I packed a box ready to go, one simple little diaper caught my eye. Something about the combination of chartreuse and lavender just made me want to tuck it away and keep it. Organic cotton, organic thread, a little dye and some snaps. That’s all. But what a combination! We don’t put color in every one of the six layers of a Firefly Quick Dry Diaper very often, but when we do, we call them Clown Diapers. (As I write, there are a few left—available only by phone order: 1-800/597-0561. But, I may tuck them away for who knows what.)

I didn’t tuck this particular diaper away. It is safely in its box travelling across the land to some lucky baby. Maybe it’s just the purple green combination. That must be it. But sometimes, despite my own babies being out of diapers for years, I am reminded that I am just a diaper nerd, too.