General Washing Tips
General laundering
After many (many) years of working with beautiful fabrics, we’ve learnt the best way to care for them. We wash test all our new collections to make sure we can share the best caring advice with our customers. Each fabric type will have laundering recommendations specifically designed for the fabric, so it’s important to carefully read the care label on each Wallace Cotton item.
Discover our general washing tips, how to keep your whites bright white and understand what we mean by shrinkage allowance.
Our washing and drying tips
Washing tips
Wash delicate bed linen using a gentle cold wash with a reduced spin. Turning duvet covers and pillowcases inside-out before washing to help protect embroidery and delicate fabrics. Avoid using fabric softener on any of our products, as the gradual build-up of fabric softener residue encourages pilling and items will lose that ‘fresh cotton feel’. When washing large bulky items, choose a slow spin cycle as this will be kinder on the fabric and your washing machine.
Drying tips
We always recommend line drying bed linen in the shade when possible, as too much direct sunlight will ‘cook’ bed linen, making it difficult to iron and will fade coloured prints. If you use a tumble dryer, we recommend adding our pure wool dryer balls to reduce drying time and save energy. Please check laundering instructions on items before tumble drying.
Top Tip - move bed linen and homeware frequently as prolonged exposure to natural light or direct sunlight will result in fading.
Keeping whites white + laundry powders
White whites
Add 2 teaspoons of baking soda to your wash to keep your whites pristine. Leaving white bed linen in the sun too long will cause discolouration. Avoid using bleach on your white linen as it is very harsh and will damage the fabric.
Laundry powders
Contrary to popular belief, using more laundry powder does not make your linen cleaner. A lot of washing powders contain fillers that can be very harsh on your clothes and linen. If you can still smell the washing powder after washing and drying, you’ve used too much. Use a little less powder than the packet states and your linen and the environment will thank you for it.
Shrinkage allowance
We ensure that most of our bed linen has been made 3% larger than our measurements, to allow for shrinkage after customer washing. After the first wash following the instructions on the care label, all items should fit perfectly and measure to our sizes. This does not apply to Loft Linen bedding, as this has been pre-washed.
Our quilts are all pre-washed so there should not be any extra shrinkage.
Our sleepwear and daywear have been pre-washed during production so shrinkage should be minimal on most garments.