Welcome, Robert.

So what exposures were you actually giving, what film were you using, and how were you metering the light? A pale background could possibly fool centre weighted metering to underexpose by a stop or two. How was the film processed?

The term "washed out" usually refers to overexposure, but I'm wondering if you actually severely underexposed colour print film and had it processed by a minilab, which attempted to "correct" the exposure, giving the washed out, grainy look.