Laundry Care Labels

Read the care label – before you buy the item

The best time to read care labels is before you buy the item. If you are unwilling or unable to care for the item as the care labels suggest, give it a pass. By law, all garments are required to have a care label. Care labels will usually be inside the back neck or waist, or attached to the inside of the left seam near the bottom of the garment.

There are reasons that garments are given the label they have. You don’t want the item to shrink or fade or pucker into a mess, so follow the instructions.

Click here for a great resource at cleaninginstitute.org that explains and shows you what the labels mean

When do you need to be more careful than what the care label suggests?

Sometimes you will need to be MORE careful than the care labels instruct you to be. For example, you have a hoodie that you love, but you want to be sure it doesn’t shrink. In this case you may want to hang/air dry it or dry it flat. My son is tall and his hoodies always get too short if they go in the dryer, so we turn them inside out and hang dry them upside down by two clip-type pants hangers at the bottom.

Can you ever use a more aggressive cleaning method than suggested?

As a rule, unless you really know fabric care, follow guidelines on care labels. Other wise you may not be able to use the item or wear the garment. I worked in the fashion industry on fabric care. I did care tests for employer when we had a number of women’s dresses returned that their daughters couldn’t have worn because the care information given to us by the fabric mill was wrong. It was sad (or funny, depending on your point of reference).

I have hand washed sweaters rather than having them dry cleaned because of my sensitivity to chemicals, but it takes a lot of care not to stretch the fabric and there is the risk that washing dry cleanables will shrink them. Rayon for example is often “dimensionally unstable”, meaning it may shrink and/or stretch unevenly. So if you choose to ignore the care labels, remember its AT YOUR OWN RISK.

If you have any questions about laundry or cleaning, let me know and I will try to answer them.