Towels

The four sizes, and which you actually need

A hand towel is roughly 50cm by 100cm and lives by the basin. A bath towel at around 70cm by 130cm dries one adult without fuss. A bath sheet at 100cm by 150cm is large enough to wrap around, which is what most people want after a bath rather than a shower. An extra large bath sheet at 100cm by 180cm gives more again.

Most households need more hand towels than anything else and buy the opposite. A basin towel is used several times a day by everyone in the house, so it needs washing far more often than a bath towel used once by one person. Two hand towels per basin, rotated, is the arrangement that works.

Why cotton, and what the pile does

Cotton fibres are hollow and swell as they absorb, which is why cotton takes up water in a way synthetics do not. The pile is the raised loop surface, and it works by presenting far more fibre to the water than a flat cloth could. A longer, denser pile holds more water and takes longer to dry; a shorter one dries faster and packs smaller.

Weight is quoted as GSM, grams per square metre, and where a range states it the product page carries the figure. Roughly speaking, 400 to 500 is an everyday towel, and above 600 is a heavy hotel-weight one that feels substantial and takes a long time on the line. Neither is better in the abstract; a heavy towel in a small bathroom with no airflow is a mistake.

The fabric conditioner problem

This is the single most common reason a towel stops working. Fabric conditioner leaves a thin waxy coating on the fibres, which is what makes a towel feel soft, and that same coating is water-repellent. Use it every wash and within a few months a good towel beads water instead of absorbing it.

Skip it entirely on towels. If they feel stiff off the line, tumble drying is what lifts the pile back up, and a cup of white vinegar in the rinse once every few months strips any residue that has built up. Softness in a towel comes from the pile standing up, not from a coating.

Washing and drying

Forty degrees is enough for everyday washing. Wash towels on their own rather than with clothing: they shed lint on the first few washes, and they need a different spin and a fuller rinse than a mixed load gets.

Tumble dry on a medium heat and take them out while barely damp. That is what keeps the loops lofted. Do not iron them, ever: pressing crushes the pile flat and a flat pile holds far less water, which undoes the whole point of the towel. Give a new towel one wash before first use, as cotton reaches full absorbency after the manufacturing finish comes off.

Colour, weave and how a bathroom reads

A woven check has its pattern built into the cloth rather than printed on it, so the design keeps its definition through years of hot washing where a print would fade off the surface. Tonal checks, where the pattern sits in the same colour family as the ground, read as texture from across a room rather than as decoration.

Natural and undyed colours forgive a bathroom in a way strong colours do not: they sit against white tiles, painted wood and stone without needing anything else to match. If you do want colour, buying a full set at once matters more than usual, since dye lots shift between production runs and two "the same" towels bought a year apart rarely are.