Textile industries are responsible for one of the major environmental pollution problems in the world, because they release
undesirable dye effluents. Textile wastewater contains dyes mixed with various contaminants at a variety of ranges. Therefore,
environmental legislation commonly obligates textile factories to treat these effluents before discharge into the receiving
watercourses. The treatment efficiency of any pilot-scale study can be examined by feeding the system either with real
textile effluents or with artificial wastewater having characteristics, which match typical textile factory discharges. This
paper presents a critical review of the currently available literature regarding typical and real characteristics of the textile
effluents, and also constituents including chemicals used for preparing simulated textile wastewater containing dye, as well
as the treatments applied for treating the prepared effluents. This review collects the scattered information relating to artificial
textile wastewater constituents and organises it to help researchers who are required to prepare synthetic wastewater.
These ingredients are also evaluated based on the typical characteristics of textile wastewater, and special constituents to
simulate these characteristics are recommended. The processes carried out during textile manufacturing and the chemicals
corresponding to each process are also discussed.