Care Label Laundry Symbols

A guide to the Laundry Symbols on the Washing Care Labels.

Ever wonder what those symbols on the care label of your clothing means? Look no further, Green Clean will help you understand this symbols in simpler and faster way.

MACHINE WASH SYMBOL
This symbol shows you if the item can be machine washed or if it has to be hand washed. It also tells you what the maximum washing temperature is and what cycle to use when machine washing.

HAND WASH SYMBOL
It means the clothing is too delicate to stand the somewhat rough environment in the washing machine and you have to wash it by hand.  Some modern washing machines have special hand wash programs that will allow washing delicates, like wool, in the machine, just check the user guide of your washer for directions.

DO NOT WASH SYMBOL
It means that piece of clothing shouldn’t be washed in water, not even hand washed. The do not wash symbol is usually accompanied by a dry cleaning symbol that tells the dry cleaner what dry cleaning processes are acceptable.

WASHING TEMPERATURE SYMBOL
The dots inside the wash symbol tells you the highest temperature the garment will take before being damaged.

WASH CYCLE SYMBOL
Wash your delicate items using the delicate cycle on your washing machine and separate from other clothing. You can try putting delicates inside a pillow case and close with a knot to protect them from the washing machine.

BLEACH SYMBOL
You may bleach this garment with any laundry bleach. Just follow the instructions carefully as too much chlorine based bleach can destroy your garments.

DO NOT BLEACH SYMBOL
Do not use any kind of bleaching agents on this garments.

NON CHLORINE BLEACH ONLY SYMBOL
On this garment, use only bleaches that do not contain chlorine. They are not hard to find, search for a bleach marked no chlorineor color safe in the supermarket..

DRY SYMBOL
If your clothes demand special drying this is the symbol to search for on the care label. If it’s not present you can use line drying and in most cases the tumbler will work as well.

TUMBLE DRY SYMBOL
The dots indicate the maximum heat setting. If there is no dots you can use any heat setting.

DO NOT DRY SYMBOL
You have to dry your clothes eventually if you want to wear them, so this symbol has a bit of a misleading name. When you see a “do not dry” or “do not tumble dry” symbol it means you shouldn’t put that piece of clothing in a machine dryer.

Most of the time there will be an additional symbol with the recommended drying method.

IRON SYMBOL
The ironing symbols tells you what the best temperature is for ironing your laundry. If you use a higher temperature than the one indicated on the label you could destroy both the clothing and the iron. If the fabric contains syntetic fibres it can even melt and make a sticky mess of the iron and board.

DO NOT IRON SYMBOL
When you see this symbol, do not iron that item!

DRY CLEANING SYMBOL
If one or several of the dry-cleaning symbols are present it is usually accompanied with a do-not-wash symbol.Most of the time you don’t need to understand the different symbols for dry-cleaning as a professional dry-cleaner will know what they mean when you take the garment there.

DO NOT DRY CLEAN SYMBOL
Don’t put this item in drycleaning solvents