Did you know that laundry tags actually provide us with a lot of important information? It explains how to best care for our clothes! When buying a new piece of clothing, we often see a few tags attached to it. Besides the brand’s label tag, a laundry tag is often sewn onto the inner lining of the garment. The symbols and written instructions on the laundry tag recommendation how to maintain our clothes, but do you know all of them? Here are some examples, where the icons can be found both on the clothing tag or printed (download the Shopform App to shop these items)!
Spot the different icons in the pictures in our guide below! Different fabrics will inevitably require different care routines and handling methods. If you are not careful, your clothes may end up discoloured or faded. Not to worry, we’ve come up with this handy guide to help you recognize the basic icons featured on laundry care labels, and what each of them really means.
The Bucket With Water – Wash
Some of the most common icons on laundry tags contain a bucket of water, with additional embellishments. In general, they refer to how your clothes should be washed.
First up, the icon shows a simple bucket filled with water. This simply means that your garment can be machine-washed safely with a normal wash cycle.
On the other hand (pun not intended), if the water bucket icon includes a hand symbol, your garment needs to be hand-washed! Instead of placing them in your washing machine, fill a small tub or sink with cool water and wash the clothes with your hands. Rub the cleaning liquid into the clothes and rinse them out well, ensuring that no soap is left in them after the wash.
Hand washing is for more fragile and luxurious materials, such as cashmere. While hand washing these garments, be gentle and not wring them out as this may ruin the material.
The Bucket With Water And Dots- Wash Temperature
Some water bucket icons have one to three dots in them. The dots refer to the temperatures at which your clothes can be washed. The lesser the dots, the lower the temperature you expose your clothes to.
As a general rule, a singular dot indicates that clothes should be washed at a maximum of 30 degrees Celsius. For two and three dots, the maximum temperature should be approximately 40 and 50 degrees Celsius respectively.
Some laundry tags have a number inside the bucket instead of dots. This number is the maximum allowable temperature for the wash cycle, in this case, 30 degrees Celsius.
If you’re worried about lower temperatures not killing enough bacteria, do not fear! Only heavily soiled items such as towels or infant clothing require washing at high temperatures. Sticking to the temperature guidelines from the laundry tag ensures that your clothes do not end up shrinking due to the heat. Heat can also cause colours to fade too, so do be careful!
The Triangle – Bleach
Before you turn to your bottle of bleach to make your whites shine like they used to, it’s worth taking a look at your garment’s fabric care label to see if the clothing can handle bleaching agents.
First up, if you see an empty triangle it means that you can safely bleach your clothing when necessary. A triangle with diagonal stripes means that only non-chlorine bleach may be used. Tags with a crossed out triangle means that you should not use bleach at all.
The Circle – Dry Clean
Sometimes, we may want to dry-clean our clothes instead of washing them to save time. However, this method may not be suitable for all garments. Laundry tags with this icon of a crossed out circle indicate that your garment cannot be dry-cleaned!
As for the contrasting icon (a circle, sometimes inside a square), this indicates that drycleaning is safe for your apparel.
The Circle Inside The Square – Tumble Dry
Do not confuse the circles inside the squares with the plain circles! This icon shows that you can safely tumble-dry your garment with a normal cycle.
The icon can also come in dotted variations, with one to three dots. Naturally, the more the dots, the higher heat your garment can be tumble-dried at.
Clothes that require high heat to tumble dry are usually those that absorb more liquid. An example of such materials is cotton. On the flip side, clothes that only need low heat to tumble dry are usually made out of more delicate materials.
Here’s a quick tip for those who need to tumble-dry their clothes in a short period of time: if you include a clean, dry towel in the machine, it will help to absorb excess liquid and dry your clothes more quickly!
The Iron – Iron
By now, you should be familiar with plain icons and their dotted counterparts. The plain and dotted iron icons have similar properties to the water buckets mentioned above. The exception is that they are guidelines for ironing.
Items tagged with the single-dotted iron are usually delicate such as silk, while items with icons that have two or three dots are usually synthetics, linen or cotton.
Of course, clothes that cannot be ironed will have an icon with a struck out iron.
And there you have it!
Caring for your clothes is a simple matter as long as you’re familiar with the meanings behind the icons on the laundry tag. Before you decide to buy a piece of clothing, check the care label to see if you are willing to follow their specific instructions. Are you willing to possibly hand-wash your clothing, or bear the extra costs of sending for dry cleaning?
Other clothing labels include showing the brand’s logo, slogan, or promise to the buyer. It can also convey a message about your brand’s commitment to sustainability (a big topic these days, take our test here to find out how sustainable with fashion you are). Notice any other familiar icons on your tags that we haven’t mentioned or have some laundry hacks up your sleeve? Feel free to share them with us in the comments section below!