the smell, first off, is pretty strong, so use a ventilated area. we used this to tie dye white polyester athletic shirts for a basketball team. the colors look weird in the bottle, but ok on the shirt after setting, which is quite the process as you'll read below. the red is more like a dark pink when all is said and done. we rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, then dried, then rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, then dried again, then rinsed and rinsed and the color still ran out. the colors were faded and kind of ran together. the one thing that did actually get the colors to be more vibrant and set the color was using a heat press. I only found this out because I put transfers on them. so I had to heat press the entire shirt(s). after that, the colors were brighter and the high heat (360 degrees) set the color so it did not run out under water anymore.