Easily yellowed dolls, is it worth it?

hrmmmm I'd imagine it depends on you personally? How stingy are you when it comes to white being completely crisp and staying that way? Also the cost of the specific doll. How much are you willing to pay for something you know is gonna look different in the future?
Bit new to the BJD community so I don't know if bringing this up is some kind of sacrilege and I know generally people don't like messing with the color of the resin but if you're really worried about yellowing you could probably put a layer of spray paint/some other coloring on it. It'd still discolor the joints but I don't think it would be too noticeable? That's up to you I guess. And I'm not really sure how that would work if it already came with a face-up. That might also yellow now that I think about it but you could always reapply.
If I were you and I found a white doll I really really loved I would probably pick it up and cross the yellowing bridge when I come to it, but if you're still looking/ on the fence uhhh idk think about it lol

 

The face-up idea is good! Sometimes when different colors are next to each other it can change how you perceive them, I don't know how (or if) exactly you'd make yellow look lighter but it might be worth looking into and keeping in mind while designing :3

 

I have a few white dolls. My oldest is over ten years old. He is definitely yellowed, but it isn’t noticeable unless I photographed him with snow or a blank piece of paper. I think resins of different quality may yellow at different rates and to varying degrees of intensity, but I have nothing to back that up, really… I figure nothing lasts forever, but ten years to turn a soft ivory colour is good enough for me. I figure if it ever gets worse or really starts to bother me I will likely attempt a pale pink dye bath to even out the colour and hopefully end up with a light ‘normal skin’.

 

I have a beautiful crisp white Maskcatdoll Astrid and I am fine with her turning ivory over the years. If it changes into a more natural color, I will be fine with it. If it turns out an horrible color, it will be in a long time and I will attempt to dye her.

But for me, when I see people posting about their "banana yellow dolls", they look fine to me, so...

 

As I have to redo the body blushing on my current white doll and he was intended to be a "paper white", I'm taking the opportunity to run an experiment on him. Is it possible to use a pure white pastel powder to blush him? I'll be attempting this on the areas that won't rub, and I'm hoping it will combat any effect of potential yellowing.

Otherwise... Just do what you can to prevent it. Keep them out of the sun for too long. Perform regular maintenance. Keep them clothed in undyed fabrics when packed up. And if a doll's yellowing gets too bad, I've seen that bathing with a denture stain remover tablet works wonders. There's a few videos of drastic recovery by doll refurbishers.

 

I have diffent old white skin dolls: the worst one -a PW- is mellowed (it's almost 10 years old), but it's a pleasant color, so I'm not going to do anything.

You can't really get away with yellowing, no matter the color, so buy whetever doll you like: there is really no reason to count your chickens before they hatch.

 

I have a Luts VDES who is....16 years old. Honestly, when I look at her I don't see any difference. When I put her next to a new white skin doll I can see that she's mellowed, but she doesn't look yellow, or even the "beauty green" that Luts was famous for. That being said, my dolls did spend some years of their lives in their boxes and I am always pretty careful about light hitting them. But not crazy, and only about 80% successful because, well, kids and cats. I always seem to come home to blackout curtains partially open. I've been in the hobby a long time and I really don't have any dolls I look at and see any major change in the resin color, but I am also a collector who keeps my dolls on display only. They don't go outside for photoshoots and so they may get less exposure than other dolls. Some of the fantasy colors age much worse I've heard, but like I said, I don't have any dolls that look a bad color, and some of mine are quite old. I also love fantasy colored dolls, I'm interested to see how they mellow as there weren't any truly fantasy colored dolls back when I started in the hobby, my fantasy girls are all much younger.

 

There's a lot of personal preference involved.

Personally very white dols don't do it for me - but once they've mellowed/yellowed to a more creamy colour, I'm fine with them. Also I find a lot of "normal" skintones too pink for my taste, but they mellow/yellow to a much more realistic skintone, so I'm OK with yellowing.

Other colours are harder to deal with - tans and browns that green rather than yellowing, or goes grey... not so appealing to me - blues and lilacs that also go grey. Greens that become a yellower green are fine, for me, or would be if I wanted a green doll in the first place... Greens that just fade... not so much.

Hybrids can also present problems - one of mine had the head fade and go greenish grey and the body, from a different company, yellowed. The yellowing was reduced by a bath in Polident, and the greying/greening on the head, likewise reduced, but the ehad is still a lot paler than the body, and far less pink.

Teddy

 

I have nobility doll that has mellowed, doesn't bother me much in this case but I have seen some dolls that are really yellowed, and that would be sad.
Do anyone know if any brands dolls that doesn't yellow that much?
Thank you

 

Keep in mind before you worry too much about this that A) dolls are a terrible investment at any skin tone, because only a handful actually hold or rise in value over time and B) most resins don’t yellow as quickly or dramatically as they might have early on in the hobby. As long as you don’t keep your dolls in a place with regular sun shining on them they’re going to yellow at a pace that won’t really be all that alarming, and they’re going to yellow evenly, so you might as well buy whatever skin tone makes you happy.

 

As others have said, yellowing and mellowing will happen because such is the nature of resin. The most strongly changed doll I have is a KDF who seems to have been in their old normal skin. He's likely over 10 years old and his resin where it was sun-exposed has lost all the pinkness to it and is now an even but noticeable Old Ivory cream. It's a nice colour but it is visible to the naked eye that his head and hands are cream while his legs are still somewhat rosey. It doesn't bother me, but it just goes to show that resin changes over time, and yellowing - strong, noticeable yellowing - will happen to dolls that aren't paper white. Definitely don't let that stop you from picking colours you enjoy. Also, with all the fantasy resins on this forum there will be people who can demonstrate how their dolls have held up over the years. From what I know about paint and pigment, red will fade the fastest in UV light (which is why a UV spray is a good idea for wanting to preserve a face) hence dolls with strong red in them will lose that fastest (purples will go grey, tans will get muddy etc) while blue is the most colourfast (greens will remain green, blues will not green). So that can also be a consideration if yellowing is going to be an issue

 

It seems your current semi-white doll is a vinyl girl from your profile correct? In that case you will barely notice any yellowing on her at all. In most cases, vinyl dolls don't yellow much or at all, but some like Nia Teppelin had issues in the past.

For resin dolls, I personally am not concerned with even yellowing on normal resin. It's slow and eventual and isn't nearly as jaundiced as I had once worried. I'd probably avoid a "beauty green", but not a modern white skin doll. I also prefer the look of yellowed white skin to a fresh batch! If you really want a WS doll that does not yellow, maybe look into Volks Ever Beauty. I don't think there's enough outside of Japan to have a good review in English on the longevity of it though.

French resin is the only kind of resin I am actually concerned about since it yellows pretty quickly! It also has a beautiful translucency that I love. I saw an originally blue bambicrony cutie who is at least partially french resin who is now green. Still cute, but that color was not built to last. I'm not sure how many companies still offer this option though because of those issues.

 

Unfortunately, it's a fact of life when it comes to resin and plastics. The reaction is purely chemical (though it can be "helped along" by sun exposure) and happens to every doll regardless of resin tone.

 

You can coat your doll in MSC UV-cut, and that will cause mostly the sealant to yellow, not the doll itself, so you can wipe it and redo it if the doll starts looking yellow. Of course, that won't stop the resin entirely from yellowing--that's just the nature of the material.

That being said, I don't think most yellowed white skin dolls look bad. Some just get this nice creamy color. Amir is 14 years old, and for the first couple of years, I didn't know about avoiding sunlight and such, but I still think he's a pretty color:

 

I like it when the resin mellows out a bit. I bought a couple of white dolls and wish I had have chosen a light flesh tone instead so it doesn't bother me.

 

I don’t have any resin dolls yet but I have seen many in person at used doll stores like Dollyteria. Maybe I’m weird, but I actually really like the banana yellow colour on them. There’s something really charming about it, like they have a history and it gives them some personality?

 

I have a friend that has dolls since 2005, back then I wasn't that interested in dolls but I liked to see her dolls. They were these cute white dolls. Now like 16 years later her dolls are yellow.... very yellow. At 10-12 years old they turned into a nice mellow color that she really liked, it was a nice cream color but now they look like banana yellow and she doesn't take pictures of them because of that but she tells me she won't sell them because she loves them, they hold a lot of sentimental value for her but her enjoyment of taking photos is gone because of their skin color.

Due to this I'm also scared of getting white dolls. From my friend's experience, I think white dolls can last for 10-15 years with a nice color. At least hers did but after that prepare for the banana yellow