How to Care for Your Cotton Essentials
Cotton is one of, if not THE, most universal fabric in all closets. It's soft, breathable, sturdy, and all-around comforting to wear from season to season with ease. It comes in many shapes, styles, sizes, types, washes, and more as is so incredibly versatile when it comes to designing closet essentials.
You'll find cotton must-haves throughout the seasons from cotton canvas, to lightweight cotton tops, to soft cotton knits and sweaters from summer to winter and beyond. We are not shy about using cotton as a mainstay staple in our collections each year.
When it comes to caring for your cotton pieces, we created a guide to help you anticipate what happens in the washing process and how to properly care for your piece to ensure it lasts a lifetime.
Washing + Drying Tips for Cotton Pieces
Cotton seems to be a crowd favorite. It feels great, looks great, and is relatively easy to care for since it’s a much more commonplace fabric. Highly absorbent, breathable, and durable, cotton is one of our favorites too.
To care for your cotton or cotton blend items, machine wash with cold water and tumble on warm or air dry to avoid breaking the fibers down and potential shrinking. As with almost all fabrics, washing and drying often will break them down over time - wash only when necessary to ensure the fabric and colors last.
Keep in mind that cotton and cotton blends are also susceptible to pilling when under a lot of friction. We do our best to choose fabrics that won’t change but be cautious with lots of repeated friction directly onto the clothes. Keep this in mind when throwing your cotton [pieces in with other styles like jeans or garments with buttons or zippers - this can cause snags, especially in our knits like sweaters and cardigans.
We pre-wash all of our pieces, and when you follow these instructions, you should not experience any shrinkage in your cotton pieces.
To dry, most of our pieces will hold up in the dryer with on the cool or tumble setting. Avoid using heat whenever possible. We also encourage customers to hang try or lie the garment flat to dry as well. Especially for heavy sweaters. This helps keep their shape, avoid sagging, and avoid those ugly bumps on the top of the shoulders from hangers!
Storing Your Cotton Pieces
When it comes to storing or hanging well-made clothes, it's simple but does need to be repeated sometimes. For sweaters, especially cotton and cotton blends, if you are storing them for any length of time (when they are in-season or out), it's best to keep them folded and stacked. They should not acquire any wrinkles that last longer than a few seconds after unfolding them, but by folding them and keeping them this way, it avoids sagging or drooping from being on a hanger too long.
After being washed and worn a lot, cotton can sometimes stretch and lose shape. To avoid this, keep these items folded, so they maintain the shape and fit you love for years.
When hanging and storing other pieces, for us, that's mostly linens, light cottons, and Tencel garments, hanging these is often best.
It prevents wrinkles that drive people crazy and maintains the shape almost perfectly. We recommend using smooth, wooden clothes hangers instead of plastics that may catch or snag the fabric when removing them or putting them away. There's nothing worse than a snag right in the shoulder of your favorite piece that everyone can see!
Finally, whenever you're packing or storing items in boxes or totes, always check to ensure they are sealed as tightly as possible to avoid any moisture that can cause mold and a horrible odor. If you store items this way, we recommend that you be extremely picky about the container or box you choose.
Otherwise, we recommend keeping them in your closet, boxed away, but still open to the air of your normal home settings. This keeps the box and garments inside from temperatures fluctuating too much and causing issues or fiber breakdowns.
Looking to add more timeless cotton pieces to your responsible wardrobe?
You can find our best-selling cotton knits here.