Traditionally, pharmaceutical syntheses have relied on the use of toxic and precious metals, which poses concerns with safety and sustainability. Homogeneous photocatalysts, which use light to drive organic reactions, are offered as a solution; however, their recoverability and reuse are poor. This work reports on the development of photocatalyst-bound cotton to achieve higher reaction yields and selectivities, along with effective photocatalyst recyclability. These photocatalysts are synthesized following a two-step process: (i) a silanization reaction to covalently attach the (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) linker to cotton, and (ii) a nucleophilic acyl substitution reaction between APTES-functionalized cotton and perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride to yield the photocatalyst-bound cotton. The lack of rigorous characterization techniques has limited the large-scale use of such heterogeneous photocatalysts. The major goal of this work is to develop a new technique to characterize the synthesized textile-bound heterogeneous photocatalysts using color shade-catalytic performance relationships. Specifically, a calibration curve relating the sample shade to the rate of photocatalytic reaction will be experimentally derived. Using spectrocolorimetry, the color of photocatalyst-bound cotton with varying photocatalyst loading was quantified. Procedures to dye cotton with photocatalysts were optimized to get evenly dyed samples, as determined by the lower standard deviation of L* values and the color intensity of the samples. Moreover, the applicability of these photocatalysts was tested in the oxidation of sulfide to sulfoxide, a functional group present in many pharmaceuticals. The progress of the reaction was monitored using thin layer chromatography (TLC) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Preliminary data accounting for several controls suggested that sulfoxide was formed only with the photocatalysts and illumination with blue light. Additionally, the recovery and reuse of these photocatalysts is under investigation. Overall, this work will serve as a foundation in the development of low-cost textile-bound photocatalysts in sustainable and efficient synthesis, which can be applied to pharmaceutical drug syntheses.