Good sheets are ruined by heat, bleach and a packed drum far more often than by use. Here is how to get 300 washes out of a set, cloth by cloth.
| Cloth | Temperature | Dryer | Avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cotton percale | 40 °C, 60 °C now and then | Medium, out while damp | Overfilling the drum — creases set like folded paper |
| Cotton sateen | 40 °C | Low, out while damp | Bleach and optical brighteners — they dull the sheen |
| Washed cotton | 40 °C with like colours | Low | Hot washes — they speed up the fading of a garment-dyed shade |
| Linen | 40 °C | Low, or line dry | Fabric softener — it coats the fibre and stops it breathing |
Use half the detergent the box suggests, liquid rather than powder, and fill the drum no more than two-thirds. Button covers before washing so the placket does not twist, and turn dark shades inside out.
Take everything out of the dryer while it is still slightly damp and put it straight onto the bed. Percale dries flat under its own weight that way and loses most of its creases; sateen keeps its hand; linen softens. Drying to bone-dry on high heat is what makes cotton feel thin and linen feel like card.
Damp from the machine, shake hard once, make the bed. That is most of the technique, and it is the difference between a percale sheet that looks pressed and one that looks slept in before anyone has slept in it.
Percale and linen crease because a plain weave with no resin finish has nothing holding it flat; many “non-iron” sheets get there with a formaldehyde-based resin that we do not use. If you want them pressed, iron while damp on a hot setting. Sateen creases far less and washed cotton is not meant to be pressed at all.
Sateen floats four threads over one, and those floats catch on a rough heel, a ring or a cat. Do not cut a pulled thread: ease it back by stretching the cloth gently on either side, and it will mostly disappear into the weave. Pilling under the chin and at the shoulders is normal after a year; a fabric shaver takes it off in a minute.
Dusk rose, blush, plum and clay are garment-dyed and lighten by about a tone a year. Cooler washes slow it down; sun on the line speeds it up. The shades fade evenly, not in patches, and a set washed together fades together, which is why the sets are sold together.
New linen is faintly scratchy for three or four washes, even after the two stone washes at the mill. Wash it before the first night if you can, with nothing else in the drum, and tumble it on low for ten minutes before it goes on the line. After that it softens on its own and keeps doing so for years. Slubs and thicker threads are the fibre, not a fault.
Fold the spare set into one of its own pillowcases, or into the cotton bag it arrived in, and keep it somewhere dry. Not in plastic, which traps damp and yellows white cotton over a year, and not in direct sun, which fades the dyed shades on the fold lines.
If a seam opens, a hem comes down, a button or tie comes off, an envelope flap tears at the corner or an elastic gives inside the first 300 washes, we repair it or replace the piece and pay the postage both ways inside the EU. That is around six years of weekly washing. It covers workmanship; it does not cover holes from claws or nails, bleach marks, scorching, sateen pilling or the ordinary fading of a garment-dyed shade.
Beyond 300 washes we still repair for the cost of postage while we stock the cloth, and spare corozo buttons are posted free for as long as we make the piece. Details on the about page.