THERE’S NOTHING WORSE than a scratchy towel that feels like it’s exfoliating you – whether you like it or not. Likewise, it’s not much fun to dry off with a limp towel that’s lost all its fluff.
There are lots of types of towels, from microfibre to thick cotton spa towels. Lightweight towels are absorbent, but will dry fast and are easy to care for, making them great for your gym bag. Thick towels will be fluffier and more absorbent, but can take much longer to dry, so maybe save those ones for the guests.
Towels all have one thing in common – a weave with a long, twisted loop pile made from fluffy fibres. These loops and fluffiness increase the surface area of the fabric so that it can absorb lots of water. Towels are measured in grams per square metre, or GSM, which indicates the denseness of those fibres; around 350 GSM is lightweight, and 600-900 GSM is the heaviest. A higher weight will be more absorbent and plusher.
So, how do we get our towels to stay fluffy?
1. Start with quality
As with all textiles, buying high quality towels will mean they will last you longer and will stay in tip top condition. The best way to judge quality is to feel the towel yourself – you want to choose one that is dense to the touch and with neat, strongly stitched edging that is a good indicator of a high standard. You can’t really gauge a towel’s quality by softness right off the shelf – they sometimes have a special coating applied during manufacture which will wear off after a few washes.
Combed cotton has excellent softness when it comes to towels, and something in the 500-700 GSM range will have good absorbency.
2. Wash them gently
Provided you’re washing your towels regularly, then the 40º cycle will be adequate; temperatures any higher than that could fade colours and patterns. Towels are quite a thick fabric and need space to move around in the water to let them get properly washed and rinsed, so avoid overloading your machine. Also, wash like with like – towels should be washed with other towels to avoid zips, fasteners, and velcro on clothing that can snag and damage the looped pile.
3. Cut back on the chemicals
Now, brace yourself for the number one reason your towels are losing their softness – too much laundry detergent and too much fabric softener! All those absorbent loops soak up any excess detergent and fabric softener in the wash; when this dries into the fabric it stiffens and makes your towels scratchy. Use less detergent for your towel wash than the recommended amount, and ditch the fabric softener altogether (it repels water, so it will make your towels less absorbent), and consider switching to an eco-friendly detergent (like this one) if you can. You should notice the softness restoring after a few washes with less detergent, but for a faster fix, add half a cup of distilled white vinegar to the pre-wash cycle. The vinegar will help to dissolve any build up on your towels and restore their original quality.
4. Let them dry on the line
This comes back to that all-important loop pile again. Tumble drying might give you soft, fluffy towels short term, but over time it compresses and crushes the towel’s fibres making them feel flat. Line drying on a breezy day is not only the quickest way to dry towels and is better for the environment than tumble drying, it has the added benefit of removing odours and brightening whites as the sun’s ultraviolet rays have a disinfecting and bleaching effect. If you like your towels really soft, then a brief tumble in the dryer with dryer balls or a tennis ball after air drying will do the trick.
5. Mind how you store them and use them
Don’t stack too many heavy towels on top of each other wherever you store them – you’ll always take the one that’s on the top of the stack, which means the one on the bottom will get more and more flattened over time. Either store bath towels in stacks of three or four, or rotate the ones at the bottom into regular use to prevent the fibres getting crushed. If you have the time and patience, rolling your towels and stacking them into a pyramid will help to prevent compressing the fibres at fold points and will prevent too much weight on the ones at the bottom.
You should also be careful with your towels when they’re in use. Give them somewhere appropriate to dry where they can be spread out fully to air and let moisture evaporate. Don’t let them sit in a crumpled heap when they’re damp as they may get mildew or take on odours that are really hard to get rid of. Lastly, change your towels regularly, especially hand towels in high usage places such as the main family loo, to keep them fresh and fluffy.
Follow Gráinne @parsekus on Instagram for more home hacks and décor inspiration.
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