Care Label Symbols
The story of a care label starts with five essential symbols the washtub, triangle, square, circle and iron symbol. From washing to bleaching to dry-cleaning, a care label is your most loyal fabric care guide for preserving your wardrobe for longer.
Washing Instructions
The washtub with a water wave tells you the ideal washing instructions for protecting your garments from shrinking, fading, or pilling.
The maximum temperature for washing your clothing is mentioned just beneath the water wave. Using a temperature higher than this for washing your clothing can damage the textile’s integrity and cause premature aging.
Keep in mind that it’s not necessary to always stick to the temperature mentioned on the care label, especially when washing printed or coloured clothing. If your clothing is less soiled or has hardly broken any sweat, you can choose a lower temperature for washing.
PRO TIP: When using fabric care detergents such as BIORESTORE cotton, check the care label for the recommended temperature. If it suggests 40 degrees or higher, you can proceed with washing.
Bleaching Instructions
You may want to brighten up your clothing, especially the whites with bleach. While we don’t recommend adding it to your laundry care routine as it’s bad for both the environment and the fabric, you can check its suitability from the triangle symbol on the care label.
A triangle means that you can use bleach on the clothing. If there are lines inside the triangle, it means that the garment is non-chlorine bleachable. Finally, If the triangle is crossed out, it means that the garment is not bleachable at all.
Drying Instructions
The square symbol tells the drying guidelines for the fabric. Here you’ll find out if your apparel needs gentle air-drying or can stand up to the rough and tumble of a machine drier.
Additional symbols in the square offer specific laundry care clues like tumble dry, line dry, or flat drying. The circle within the symbol uses dots to inform about the optimal drying temperature. Three dots equal high heat, 2 dots medium and one dot indicates low temperature. A solid circle, finally, means no heat at all.
If you are using BIORESTORE Re-Tergent to care for cotton fabric, but the care label mentions “no tumble-drying”, don’t worry! Simply rinse the garment with a small amount of your regular detergent and lay it flat to dry.
Ironing Instructions
The Iron symbol gives the ideal temperature for pressing out wrinkles. To reveal the maximum temperature for ironing, different number of dots are used in a care label. Three dots are equivalent to a temperature of 200ºC, two dots 150ºC, and one dot approximately 110ºC.
For cotton wash care, it’s best to remove your clothing from the dryer when they are slightly damp. This will prevent the fabric from over-drying and getting excessive wrinkles.
Dry Cleaning Instructions
Finally, the circle is a nod to dry-cleaning. Letters within the circle (like A, P, and F) symbolize the specific dry-cleaning solvents that are suitable and which expert fabric care your garment requires.
Sometimes, you’ll see an iron symbol nestled into the circle, indicating that you may need a touch-up with the iron after dry-cleaning. An underlined circle means that the fabric may be sensitive to some dry-cleaning procedures and must be treated with expert care and attention.
Where to find a care label?
The placement of a care label can vary from garment to garment. From inside the breast pocket of a formal shirt to the hidden marking at the waistband of your favourite jeans, these care labels can be a little tricky to be found, especially when dealing with apparel that’s not usually laundered in our everyday piles.
Is care label always the answer?
Care labels claim to be our wardrobe’s faithful clothing care guides, but they can often lead us astray. For instance, you may see the infamous “dry-clean only” tag on a garment, which, in fact, can be laundered safely with some added caution. Issues like “inaccurate labelling” or “low labelling” (prescribing more care than a textile actually needs) are also common.
Instead of trusting these labels blindly, it’s important to use some common-sense during laundry. Of course, you're not going to hot machine wash your woolen and cashmere knits unless you’re looking for a shrunken and felted fit. Likewise separating colors might not always be mentioned on the label, but general knowledge and experience will tell you to separate white clothing from the coloured ones.
How to preserve fabric care labels for longer?
Care labels can sometimes feel itchy or irritating, especially for kids, or when placed in the back of a collar. While it seems tempting to just cut them out and throw them in the bin, let’s try some alternatives. Consider pinning those cut-off labels on a bulletin board in your laundry room for safekeeping.
An even better idea is to reattach the labels someplace where it’s less irritating. For instance, the side seam within a couple of inches of the bottom hem. While it may take a little extra effort, preserving these clothing care guides is well-worth it and will save a lot of hassle and head scratching in the future.
o prefer purchasing clothing and fabrics that are easier to maintain. For example, if the label mentions “dry-clean only”, it can get a little challenging to clean that garment. By considering the ideal washing and drying guidelines on the care label, you can pick the pieces that can be preserved for years to come.
