Laundry may how to#

While there are pros and cons to washing with hot water, defer to your garments’ care labels and they will look clean and smell fresh every time.Īlways check the label on new clothes or garments you’re unsure about.

Laundry may how to#

The washing instruction symbols above tell you how to wash a garment, what temperature to use, and which cycle is needed. At the other end of the spectrum, some garments just arenâ€™t strong enough to be tossed in the machine if you put clothing like this into your washer, you might well ruin it. Getting the water temperature and wash cycle right is essential for clean, fresh-smelling laundry, and can even prevent damage to your clothes. Wash Hot (in temperatures that exceed 120F).Wash Warm (in temperatures at a maximum of 105F).Wash Cold (in temperatures between 65 and 85F).Washing Instruction Symbols Washing Methods The remaining laundry tag symbols refer to bleaching (triangle), dry-cleaning (circle), and non-machine drying (square) instructions. The icon that looks like a bucket of water instructs how to wash a garment, the square with a circle in the center instructs how to dry it, and the iron symbol instructs how to iron it. The first thing you need to learn is what each symbol means on a laundry symbols chart. While there are slight differences between the European and American versions, most laundry icons of garment tags are universal. The idea didn’t catch on in the United States until the 1970s, but today we find laundry tag symbols on almost every garment. Setting the temperature and wash cycle as recommended by the manufacturer not only gives you awesome laundry results, it can also prevent damage to your clothes.Īccording to Jonathan Walford, the curatorial director at the Fashion History Museum, laundry symbols were being used in Europe as early as the late 1950s. These laundry symbols tell you all you need to know about how to do the washing and drying, and bleaching and ironing. The symbols printed on the tags of your garments may seem like they are in a foreign language, but they serve an essential purpose: to keep your clothes looking newer longer.