I love batiks and treat like all my fabrics--I rub (hard) white paper on the fabric and if no trace of color on paper, then I don't pre-wash. I always use cold water--on all my wash with very few exceptions, so batiks are washed in cold too. Have had no dye bleeding problem with them. I do think that some batiks are more heavily satuated with dye--seems like those that have less wax-release design on them (more like marbleized stuff) have more dye saturated.