How to Wash New Towels Before You Use Them

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Wash new towels before first use: one hot wash on their own with a cup of white vinegar and no detergent, then a second normal warm wash with half your usual detergent dose and no fabric softener. The first wash removes the silicone and starch finish the mill applies, which is what stops a brand-new towel absorbing.

Almost everybody has had the experience of buying expensive towels and finding them disappointing. They push water around instead of soaking it up, they shed lint over everything, and they feel oddly slippery.

None of that is a bad towel. It is a towel still wearing its factory finish.

Towels come off the loom and go through a finishing process before they are packed. Softeners, silicone emulsions and starches are applied for three commercial reasons that have nothing to do with how the towel performs in your bathroom: they make the pile look plump on a shelf, they make it feel soft through packaging, and they help the cloth run through the cutting and sewing machinery.

Every one of those agents is hydrophobic or film-forming. They sit on the outside of the loops, which is exactly where water needs to make contact. So a brand-new towel is, briefly, a water-repellent object.

This is the same mechanism as the one that ruins older towels, just applied at the factory instead of by you. Why towels stop absorbing covers the long-term version.

1. Wash the new towels on their own. Not with clothes, not with your existing towels. New towels shed a lot of lint on the first two cycles and it transfers.
2. Hot wash, one cup of white vinegar in the drum, no detergent. The acid cuts the silicone and starch finish, and detergent in this load would just react with it rather than remove it.
3. Second wash: warm, half your normal detergent dose, no vinegar. This clears what the first wash loosened and anything the vinegar left.
4. No fabric softener. Not now, not ever. Adding softener to a new towel re-coats the fiber you just spent two cycles uncovering.
5. Tumble dry on medium, or line dry and finish in the dryer for ten minutes. The tumbling is what fluffs the pile open after the finish comes off.

Two cycles is the honest answer for most towels. A very heavy or very plush towel can need three before it is absorbing at full rate, and a zero-twist towel is usually quickest because the open loops have less finish clinging to them.

New towels shed. Some of it is loose fiber cut during manufacture and some is short fiber working its way out of the yarn, and there is no way to skip it -- but there are three ways to get through it faster.

• Wash them alone for the first two or three cycles. This is the whole trick. Lint on a new towel is harmless; lint on a black jumper is not.
• Clean the dryer filter between loads, not after. A loaded filter stops the dryer working and prolongs the drying time that the towel needs.
• Shake each towel out before it goes in the dryer. A surprising amount comes off dry.
• Expect it to stop by about wash four. A towel still shedding heavily at wash ten is short-staple cotton, and that is a purchasing fault rather than a washing one. Cotton grades explained.

For the first wash, yes -- hot water is what mobilizes a silicone finish, and this is the one wash where temperature is doing real work. After that, warm is the routine temperature for towels, with an occasional hot wash when something has stayed damp.

Do expect some shrinkage on the first two washes. A cotton towel loses roughly 3 to 5% and then stops, which is why a towel measured at 27 x 54 in off the shelf will settle slightly smaller. If you are buying for a specific rail or ring, allow for it. Towel sizes.

Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda is worth having for the first hot wash in a hard-water area -- sodium carbonate keeps the dissolved finish from re-depositing on the pile as the water cools. In soft water, vinegar alone is enough. Hard water and towels.

Charlie's Soap laundry powder is the detergent for wash two and everything after: four ingredients, washing-soda based, dosed at a tablespoon, and formulated to rinse completely out of a pile. Starting a new towel's life on a detergent that leaves no residue is the cheapest thing you can do for its lifespan. The full detergent roundup.

What to have in the cupboard before the towels arrive -- plus the towel we would be breaking in, if you have not ordered yet.

Detergent that rinses completely out

Charlie's Soap Laundry Powder

A four-ingredient, washing-soda-based powder that produces no suds and rinses clean -- which is the single property that matters for towels.

$15.99 - View on Amazon

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Hard water and greasy build-up

Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda

Sodium carbonate -- a stronger alkali than baking soda that boosts detergent performance and is the standard answer for greasy, hard-water-stiffened towels.

$2.99 - View on Amazon

#ad How we are funded · Price as of November 3, 2026

Hotel feel at a hotel-supply price

Chakir Turkish Linens Hotel & Spa Bath Towel

A 550-600 GSM long-staple Turkish cotton towel built to the hotel-and-spa spec, which is exactly the crisp, medium-weight towel most people are actually trying to buy.

Check price on Amazon

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A new peshtemal behaves differently and needs a different first wash: it arrives stiff with natural cotton wax rather than slippery with silicone, and the break-in takes several washes rather than two. It is also the one towel where that stiffness is expected and correct. How to wash and break in a Turkish towel.

Everything else -- terry towels, waffle towels, bath sheets, robes, hand towels and washcloths -- takes the routine above. After that, the ongoing method is what keeps them working.