How to Prevent Clothes from Shrinking: 5 Helpful Tips | Whirlpool (2024)

FAQs

How to Prevent Clothes from Shrinking: 5 Helpful Tips | Whirlpool? ›

The best way to keep your clothing from shrinking is by following the recommendations on care labels. For fabrics prone to shrinking, this may include using cold water to wash them and avoiding dryer cycles with high temperature settings. To dry your clothing, use a low heat tumble cycle, or hang/line dry.

And if it's 100% cotton, avoid heat as much as possible. This means washing the fabric with cold or lukewarm water. Reshaping your garments and laying them flat to air-dry is ideal. Line drying is okay, but the warmth of direct sunlight could cause shrinkage.

Clothes shrink because the fibers shorten when exposed to heat, water, and agitation—and the shrinkage knows no wardrobe bounds. A wool jacket, broken-in denim, or your favorite shirt: They're all at risk if not cared for properly.

Expect and anticipate a few centimetres of shrinkage in new items, but if something shrinks more than 5% it may be faulty. Buy secondhand or vintage clothes. “If it's not brand new it's probably already been washed so you're not going to find it's going to shrink,” Van Amber says.

In most scenarios, all you need is a container full of warm water with a capful of liquid detergent. Next, make sure to add in your clothes and stir them into the solution until they are completely soaked. Gently wring out the clothing to expel excess liquid and gently stretch the clothing back to its original size.

Why do my T shirts shrink? ›

As mentioned above shrinkage is all a result of exposure to heat, liquid and agitation, which can happen both during the washing and drying stages of your laundry routine. Therefore it is important that you are mindful of the below tips to be sure that another piece of clothing isn't ruined.

Heat in the dryer: The combination of heat and tumbling in the dryer can cause clothes to shrink, especially if they are made of materials prone to shrinking. Using a lower heat setting or air drying can help reduce the risk of shrinkage.

Use hot water while washing, and set your dryer to a high heat setting. Ensure that the temperature is above 140F, and your polyester should shrink. One thing to note is that you can't shrink polyester by more than a couple of inches. And the measurements won't be precise.

Linen can shrink in both the washer and dryer, so take extra care. It's all about the heat. High temperatures are what can make linen shrink. So stay away from high dryer heat (over 35C) and hot water washing machine cycles (over 30C) to keep your linens in top condition for years and years.

Is there a universal rule for how to shrink your clothes? In a way, yes. Though every type of fabric behaves differently, heat will shrink most, if not all, fabric types. For example, both cotton shirts and denim jeans will shrink more in a warm or hot wash, followed by a high heat drying cycle.

In most scenarios, all you need is a container full of warm water with a capful of liquid detergent. Next, make sure to add in your clothes and stir them into the solution until they are completely soaked. Gently wring out the clothing to expel excess liquid and gently stretch the clothing back to its original size.

Over-drying your clothes can shrink and damage them over time, so check the load to make sure it's not pumping hot air through already-dry clothes.

Your cotton sheets should only shrink up substantially once, after the first wash and dry. Cotton typically stops shrinking after it's washed thoroughly the first time, but it really shouldn't shrink much more after the second time.

Shrinkage happens over time, not all at once

The first time a shirt is washed it usually shrinks the most, but it can still be expected to shrink more over the life of the shirt.