How to Wash Towels and Keep Them Soft: A Complete Care Guide

Towels that go stiff, smell musty or stop absorbing water are almost never faulty towels. They are well-made towels that have been washed badly for a long time. The good news is that the damage is usually reversible, and the habits that prevent it are simple.

This guide covers how to wash towels correctly, how to strip out the build-up that ruins them, and the handful of mistakes that account for most towel problems.

Why Towels Go Stiff and Stop Absorbing

Three things degrade a towel over time, and only one of them is age.

Fabric softener is the biggest culprit. It works by coating fibres in a thin waxy or silicone film. On clothing that produces a soft hand feel. On towels it produces a water-repellent surface — which is precisely the opposite of a towel's only job. Worse, the coating accumulates. Every wash adds another layer.

Detergent residue builds up the same way. Using more detergent than the load needs leaves surfactant trapped in the dense cotton pile, where it stiffens as it dries and traps odour.

Mineral deposits from hard water bind to the fibres and make the pile feel crunchy. In parts of Australia with harder water this happens faster than people expect.

The stiffness people try to solve with more softener is, in most cases, caused by softener in the first place.

The Right Way to Wash Towels

Use Less Detergent Than You Think

Most people use two to three times more detergent than a towel load requires. Dense cotton pile holds onto residue far more stubbornly than a shirt does. Use roughly half the recommended dose and you will usually get cleaner, softer towels — not dirtier ones.

Wash Warm, Not Scalding

Warm water — around 40°C — dissolves body oils and detergent effectively without cooking the fibres. Very hot washes shorten the life of cotton and accelerate colour fading. Save hot washes for occasions when sanitising genuinely matters, such as after illness.

Don't Overload the Machine

Towels need room to move. A packed drum means water and detergent cannot circulate, so the towels neither get properly clean nor properly rinsed. Fill the drum to about three-quarters and no further.

Wash Towels Separately

Towels shed lint, especially when new. Washing them with clothing transfers that lint onto everything else and puts your towels through a cycle calibrated for a different fabric. Keeping towels as their own load solves both problems.

Skip Fabric Softener Entirely

There is no version of fabric softener that helps a towel. If you want softness, get it from the cotton quality and the drying method instead.

Stripping Out Existing Build-Up

If your towels are already stiff or smelling musty, they can usually be recovered.

Run them through a hot wash with a cup of white vinegar and no detergent. The acid dissolves mineral deposits and breaks down softener residue. Then run a second wash with half a cup of bicarbonate of soda and again no detergent — this neutralises remaining odour and lifts what the vinegar loosened.

Do not combine the vinegar and bicarb in the same cycle. They neutralise each other and you get the benefit of neither.

Most towels come out of this noticeably softer and considerably more absorbent. Repeat every few months as maintenance rather than waiting for problems to return.

Drying Towels Properly

Line Drying vs Machine Drying

Line drying in Australian sun is excellent for sanitising and colour, but towels dried on a still line often come out stiff — the pile flattens as it dries without agitation. The fix is simple: give each towel a hard shake before hanging, and another when you bring it in.

Machine drying on low to medium heat with a good tumble produces a softer pile because the constant movement keeps the loops standing up. High heat is what damages towels, not the dryer itself.

A combination works best: line dry for most of the way, then ten minutes in the dryer to lift the pile.

Dry Completely Before Folding

This is the single most-ignored rule. A towel folded away even slightly damp will develop a musty smell that survives the next wash, because the odour comes from bacteria that have already established in the fibres.

Hang Towels Properly Between Uses

A towel bunched on a hook stays damp for hours. Spread across a rail, it dries in a fraction of the time. This one habit does more for towel freshness than anything you do in the machine.

Common Mistakes Worth Avoiding

Bleaching coloured towels. Chlorine bleach breaks down cotton fibres and strips colour unevenly. For whites, use an oxygen-based alternative.

Ironing towels. It crushes the pile flat, which is exactly the structure doing the absorbing.

Washing new towels with old ones. New towels shed considerable lint in their first several washes. Keep them separate until they settle.

Expecting peak absorbency immediately. New towels often carry a manufacturing finish that reduces absorbency until washed out. Give a new towel three or four washes before judging it.

How Long Should Towels Last?

A well-made cotton towel that is washed correctly should give you years of daily service. The Sunday Supply Co. home towels are made from plush, highly absorbent cotton chosen specifically to hold softness through repeated washing — but no towel survives fabric softener indefinitely.

When a towel does reach the end of its life — thinning pile, fraying hems, absorbency that no amount of stripping restores — it still has a second life as a cleaning cloth, a car towel or padding for storage.

Shop the Collection

Good care extends the life of a good towel. Browse the Sunday Supply Co. home towel collection — bath, hand and face towels in Chocolate and Dunes, built to stay soft with the right care.