Laundry symbols

About laundry symbols

Laundry symbols, also called washing symbols, are the symbols on a care label. A care label says how a garment or other textile can be washed, bleached, dried, ironed and professionally cleaned, and most labels say it in symbols rather than words. Europe and North America use the same five basic symbols: a washtub for washing, a triangle for bleaching, a square for drying, an iron for ironing and a circle for professional cleaning. Marks added to each one refine what it allows, and a cross through a symbol rules that treatment out. Each symbol has its own page.

The symbols also say which washer and dryer settings an item can take. Canada’s government guide reads the washtub as washing in a domestic or commercial washing machine, up to a set water temperature and at a named setting, and a circle inside the square as tumble drying at a set heat.

How to read a care label

The washtub covers washing by machine or by hand, and a hand in the tub means hand washing. A number in the tub is the highest water temperature in degrees Celsius; in the US system, one, two or three dots can mark the temperature instead. A bar under the tub calls for a mild cycle and two bars for a very mild one, as used for machine-washable wool.

An empty triangle allows any bleach. A triangle with two slanting lines allows only non-chlorine bleach, and a crossed triangle means no bleach at all.

A circle inside the square means tumble drying, as in Tumble dry, low heat. Lines inside the square instead mean natural drying: on a line, flat, or dripping wet, as in Drip dry.

The iron's settings run from a soleplate of 110°C at the lowest to 200°C at the highest. The circle is meant for professional cleaners. Letters inside it tell them which solvents can be used, and a bar under it asks for a gentler process.

How well people read them

GINETEX, the association behind the international symbols, had 6,000 people in Germany, England, France, Italy, the Czech Republic and Sweden surveyed in December 2016. The ironing and washing symbols were understood best, by 97% and 91%. But 39% did not know the bleaching symbol and 45% did not know the drying symbol, and only 21% read the professional cleaning circle correctly. The bars under a symbol were noticed by only one European in four.

Differences by country or standard

Europe uses the international system, which comes from GINETEX and is published as ISO 3758. The United States allowed symbols on care labels from 1 July 1997, but chose its own variant, ASTM D5489. The Federal Trade Commission gave three reasons: the international set then had no symbols for natural drying, non-chlorine bleach or steam ironing; it had only normal and low tumble-drying temperatures, which did not suit American machines; and GINETEX asserted trademark rights over it. Symbols for non-chlorine bleach and natural drying have since joined the international set.

The two systems share the five basic symbols and differ in the details. A US label can show a tumble-dry circle with no dots for any heat, a filled circle for no heat, and a solid crossed triangle for do not bleach. It can also mark water temperature with dots where the international label prints a number. ASTM dropped words such as “warm” from its chart after Industry Canada pointed out that Canada defined warm as 50°C while the United States defined it as at most 43°C.

Japan replaced its own symbols with ones harmonised with the international system on 1 December 2016, going from 22 symbols to 41. In Australia, the mandatory standard lets suppliers give care instructions in English words, in the international symbols, or both.

Where the symbols came from

Until the mid-1950s most textiles were natural fibres, and two washing programmes were enough: 95°C for boiling and 60°C for colours that might run. From the early 1960s, synthetic fibres, easy-care finishes and more sophisticated washing machines made textile care more complicated, and clothes crossed more borders, where written care instructions in one language no longer served. GINETEX, the international association for textile care labelling, was founded in Paris on 26 March 1963. In 1987 it agreed that the International Organization for Standardization could use its symbols, provided the standard recognised its rights, and the first ISO standard, Textiles – Care labelling code using symbols, was published in 1991.