YOU’VE BEEN WASHING YOUR TOWELS ALL WRONG: EXPERT

Do you hate it when you buy fluffy towels and then they go scratchy after a few washes?

You might be washing your towels wrong, and interiors expert Rachel Cohen has revealed exactly how you should be doing your laundry to prevent this.

Here are Rachel’s top tips for keeping your towels fluffy and in a condition you’d find in a hotel.

DON’T ESTIMATE THE DETERGENT AMOUNT

Many people tip the amount of detergent — either powder or liquid — into a washing machine that they guess they’ll need for their wash. But if you end up using too much, it will actually prevent your towels from rinsing clean. This will result in them being stiff instead of fluffy — not the desired result.

To find out the correct amount, you should look at the detergent instructions for your washing load.

USE COLD WATER

You may use the same setting for your towels that you do for your clothes and bedding, but this isn’t always best. Instead, you should put your towels on a cold wash in the machine. Rachel advised: “The icy temperatures prevent shrinkage at the seams, help keep colours true and work better on certain stains.”

AVOID SOFTENER

It can be tempting to add fabric softener to make your towels less stiff, but this can damage the towel fibres and make them less supple. Rachel advised adding a tennis ball into a tumble dryer to agitate the fibres so they fluff up.

Wash your towel separately to avoid pilling, where small balls of fluff appear on the surface.

DON’T OVER DRY

If you want to prevent damaging your towels, you should remove them from a tumble dryer before they are completely dry, and then let them dry naturally. This helps prevent damage to the fibres, and you should also skip dryer sheets as these can reduce the absorbency of your towel over time. Make sure you put very absorbent towels on the quickest cycle possible, as they don’t require long in a dryer.