How To Wash & Dry Wool Clothing
This post contains Amazon Affiliate links, which means that if you click on the links and buy the item, I may earn a small commission. But don’t worry, it doesn’t affect the price you pay and I only recommend products that I have used myself.
During the lockdown, I became interested in the different types of yarn available, in particular wool. We often say wool as an interchangeable word with yarn, but ‘yarn’ is really the collective noun for all types of fibre – wool, acrylic, linen, bamboo, cotton, nylon, alpaca, etc. and ‘wool’ is the fibre that comes from animals – sheep, llamas, alpacas, goats, rabbits, etc.
My discovery of wool came from being on Instagram and stumbling across many incredibly talented yarn dyers and falling in love with the design and artistry that they put into their craft. Up until then, I had only ever used acrylic yarns and wasn’t really interested in ‘proper’ wool because of the care those garments made from wool need. Most acrylic yarns can be machine washed, at a low temperature. Wool can’t. And that to me was the main difference. I know that there can be some snobbery around types of yarn, but there are some truly stunning synthetic yarns and some fairly average wools. My concern was always about the care of woollens, but having since worked with them, both for myself and my business, it isn’t as scary as I thought.
Quick note – woollen items don’t need to be, and shouldn’t be, washed after every use. They don’t tend to retain smells like synthetic fibre does, so don’t labour under the misapprehension that you will have to wash them every time you wear them – even socks! If I want to just refresh a woolly item, I will just give it a little spray of water with a few drops of essential oils in it and leave it to hang out overnight. It is perfectly fresh the next morning and ready to wear again.
- The first thing is to have the correct detergent and it has to be specifically for wool. I personally use Eucalan in the Unscented and also the Lavender. These are both lovely to use and only need a tiny amount for each piece of clothing. The other highly recommended brand is Soak. I haven’t used this myself, purely because it isn’t stocked by my local yarn shop.
- Run a bowl of tepid water and drop in the suggested amount of detergent. I tend to use my bathroom sink for this, unless the item is too big, but the majority of items fit perfectly into the sink.
- Place the item into the water and gently make sure it is submerged and leave to soak for approx 20 minutes.
- Don’t rub the fabric together as this agitation will cause the wool to become felted.
- Empty the water and squeeze the item against the side of the sink to get out the excess water. Again, don’t agitate the fibre.
- Lay out a clean and dry towel and lie the garment flat onto it. Then roll the towel up with the item inside and gently squeeze the towel. You’d be surprised how much liquid this gets out!
- Take the item out of the towel ready to dry. Wool needs to lay flat to dry. If you hang it up on a clothes hanger, the weight of the water will pull the item out of shape. I personally have a flat clothes airer which is perfect to lay the item out on to. At this point, you can gently and carefully adjust the shape of the item to what it was before and then leave it to dry.
And that is it! Not as scary as we thought.
