Line dry
The item is meant to be dried hanging, on a line or a hanger.
Easily confused with
How to read it
A square with a curved line along its top edge means hanging the item to dry after excess water has been removed. A square with lines inside marks natural drying; a circle inside marks tumble drying.
Where a garment's own label or its manufacturer says otherwise, that takes precedence.
Differences by country or standard
This curved-line symbol is the North American form, shown in the Canadian government's guide. The international guide from GINETEX draws natural drying with straight lines inside the square instead: vertical for drying on a line, horizontal for drying flat.
The natural drying symbols are a later addition to the international system. In 1997 the US Federal Trade Commission noted that the ISO and GINETEX system had no symbols for natural drying; GINETEX's history counts line drying, drip line drying, flat drying and drip flat drying among its latest symbols.
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Read next
- Next in Laundry symbolsDry flatThe item is meant to be dried lying flat.
- The same shape in Accessibility symbolsTTY symbolA telephone handset above a keyboard is the International Symbol of TTY. It marks a text telephone, a TTY, which lets people who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired type a phone conversation.
More laundry symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with curves and waves or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Textiles — Care labelling code using symbols, ISO 3758, ISO, Abstract (ISO 3758:2023)
- Standard Guide for Care Symbols for Care Instructions on Textile Products, ASTM D5489, ASTM International, section 4.6 (ASTM D5489-25)
- Textile Care Symbols, GINETEX, the International Association for Textile Care Labelling, p. 7
- Guide to Apparel and Textile Care Symbols, CAN/CGSB-86.1-2003, Office of Consumer Affairs, Government of Canada, p. 4
- Trade Regulation Rule on Care Labeling of Textile Wearing Apparel and Certain Piece Goods (interim rule, 1997), 62 FR 5724, 6 February 1997, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Register (govinfo.gov)
- Fifty Years of Care Labelling Symbols Since 1963, GINETEX, the International Association for Textile Care Labelling
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 24, 2026. How we research
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