BEREA, Ohio - A freshly mulched flower bed looks wonderful ... for a few months. But whether it’s black, brown or red, mulch fades as the sun and rain bare down on it. To keep it colorful many people buy fresh mulch every year, sometimes even twice a year.

Instead of spending money on new mulch, why not spend just a few dollars on mulch dye? That’s what one reader does often to give his flower beds a touch up.

Bill wrote: For the money and huge amount of coverage you get, I think this is a great value to stretch out the life of your mulch for as long as possible, keep it looking fresh and your yard looking neat and well-maintained.

Bill was referring to a product called Colorback, other brands make something similar.

It’s a dye made specifically for recoloring faded mulch. You mix concentrate with water in a pump sprayer, spritz it over your flower beds and poof — fresh mulch.

It seems like a no-brainer. Color vanishes quickly but the actual wood chips take years to break down. Why buy new mulch when the old stuff just needs TLC?

But if you have no brain — like I apparently do — this process can become a nightmare.

This dye isn’t just good at staining mulch. It stains sidewalks, vinyl siding, skin, plants — even the faint amount of facial hair I can grow is now partially black.

I spent more time using a power washer than spraying dye, which is a testament to how easy Colorback is to apply and the robust color it can produce.

Here’s why it’s so much cheaper to use mulch dye

If you can avoid the mess, a mulch dye like Colorback is an excellent way to save money. It’s cheaper and — for a meticulous person — easier.

You can buy mulch in bags or in bulk. Either way costs can add up.

Say we have a square, 10-foot-wide flower bed — or 100 square feet to cover. You’d need 17 bags or a cubic yard of mulch for a three-inch layer.

If bags are on sale for $2 that’s $34, or $67 at their regular price. Bulk mulch is a similar cost at $35.

One half-gallon container of Colorback covers 6,400 square feet. With a bottle costing $40, that’s 64 cents to add color to the same amount of mulch.

This saves Bill money. When mulch fades, he can touch it up in the late summer or the next spring. Instead of buying $500 of mulch each year, Bill says he buys new mulch every other year.

Bill, to his credit, warned me: “And don’t get the dye on any surfaces besides the mulch. It will stain them.”

Messy mulch

I tried Colorback. I will not try it a second time.

The product mixes easily enough and it sprays evenly. I started off with natural, un-dyed wood chips that had sat for a year. Even under not ideal conditions the color penetrated.

No need to haul and cut open bags or load and unload wheelbarrows. Just mixing, spraying and trying to be careful around plants and edges.

I wasn’t careful enough.

There’s nothing interesting to write about a mess. If you can imagine letting a toddler eat spaghetti on a white couch, that was essentially me in my yard.

This stuff stains. Even using cardboard to block off areas it still got on the house and on the sidewalk. The absolute death blow though — and again, my fault — was not wearing gloves.

If this gets on your hands and shoes, you’re in huge trouble. Because everything you touch or step on can become ground zero for contamination.

It’s worth noting that I do not excel at tedious tasks like painting the trim in a room, weeding garden beds, puzzles, editing the apostrophe out of “it’s” when it should be “its,” etc.

My girlfriend deserves all the credit in the world. She arrived home from work to see this mess and threw her own evening plans aside to start power washing my mistakes.

All that said, the product works.

This is not the horror story you might have read online where people use exterior house paint or spray paint on their flower beds. Colorback works just like you’d expect mulch dye to work.

While I can’t prove it, it’s likely the exact stuff they use to dye mulch initially.

I’ll include a few photos with the caveat that I did not use Colorback as intended. You should use it to touch up faded mulch. I was doing the equivalent of going from blonde hair to jet black.

With faded mulch you can be less diligent. Spots you miss would just look faded, not a completely different color. This might let you avoid spraying close to surfaces you need to avoid.

This was a colossal failure for me. But with Home Depot, Lowe’s and Amazon selling this product, I can’t imagine it is a bad idea for everyone.

Do as I say, not as I do. Dye your mulch and save hundreds of bucks. Just do so carefully.