A substantial variation in characteristics arises from the use of dye-house wastewater. Such a dye-house effluent is heavily polluted and has to be treated before discharge and/or reuse. The pre-treatment is needed in order to avoid high operational costs as a consequence of frequent membrane fouling. Therefore, the aim of this research was to study the appropriateness of dead-end ultrafiltration (UF), with or without a flocculation pre-treatment, with the emphasis on colour and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal. The dyes employed in the dyeing processes were disperse dyes for polyester fabrics, as well as metal-complex dyes for the dyeing of polyamide fabrics. The removal efficiencies for colour and COD were studied using several ultrafiltration membranes. Two hydrophobic and one hydrophilic commercial UF membranes were selected. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.