Linen gets stronger when wet and softer with every wash, which makes it hard to ruin. Here is how people manage it anyway, and how not to.
| Do | Avoid | |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | 40 °C for bedding and clothing, 60 °C for kitchen and table | Above 60 °C regularly — it slowly weakens the fibre |
| Detergent | Half the dose on the box; liquid rather than powder | Anything with optical brighteners on oat — it turns it grey-white |
| Load | Two-thirds full at most | A drum stuffed to the top — the creases set like folds in paper |
| Softener | None, ever | Fabric softener — it coats the fibre and stops tea towels drying anything |
| Dark shades | Wash with like colours; turn garments inside out | Washing slate with a white wool jumper — the lint is permanent-looking |
Linen is happiest taken out damp. Ten to fifteen minutes in a tumble dryer on low, then straight onto the bed, the rod, the hanger or the line, and it finishes drying in place with the creases falling out of it. Drying to bone-dry in a machine is what makes linen stiff and papery.
Damp from the machine, shake hard once, put it where it lives. Bed linen goes straight on the bed, curtains straight back on the rod, shirts on a wide hanger from the shoulders. That is the whole technique.
Linen creases because the flax fibre has almost no elasticity. It is not a defect and it does not mean the cloth is poor; the finest linen creases most. If you want it pressed, iron it while still damp on the hottest setting your iron has. Ironing dry linen does very little except take time.
Moths eat protein fibres — wool, silk, cashmere. Linen is cellulose and they do not want it. If you find holes in stored linen it is almost always a wool piece folded next to it that drew them, or damp. Store dry, in cotton or linen bags, not plastic.
Wash panels one or two at a time in a large drum, on a gentle 30 °C. Take them out damp and hang them straight back on the rod; their own weight pulls the creases out over a day. Do not tumble dry a curtain panel to completion — it will finish 2 cm shorter than you hemmed it.
The 240 gsm dense panel will fade on the window side over years of full sun, as any dyed textile will. The oat panel, being undyed, will not.
Wash inside out at 30 to 40 °C. Dry on a wide hanger from the shoulders, or flat for the lounge set. Linen garments soften markedly over the first ten washes and then settle. Expect the rust wrap dress to lose about a tone in its first year; the oat and chalk pieces do not change colour.
Pilling does not happen with linen. Small slubs and thicker threads in the weave are the fibre, not a fault.
Wash at 60 °C. Tea towels are stiff for the first three or four washes and then become the softest and most absorbent cloth in the kitchen — and they stay lint-free on glass throughout. Fold napkins straight from the line rather than ironing; the softness is the point.
If a seam opens, a hem comes down, a button falls off or a tie detaches within the first 60 washes, we repair it or replace the piece, and we pay the postage both ways. That is roughly a year of weekly washing on bedding, and several years on a tablecloth. It covers workmanship; it does not cover a scorch mark from a hot pan, a tear on a nail, or the ordinary fading of a dyed shade.
Beyond 60 washes we still repair for the cost of postage while we stock the cloth. Coconut buttons are posted free for as long as we make the piece.