Here at SuperSuds, we firmly believe that you must pay attention to the laundry care symbols on your clothing to get the best wash possible. That’s why we wanted to break them down for you in this month’s blog. We will help you better understand the most important laundry care symbols. After all, once you understand something it’s easier to remember, right? Right! Plus download our laundry care symbol chart to your phone for quick reference or print it and place it in your laundry room.
Washing Symbols
To help remember the washing symbols, think of the above symbol as your wash tub. Once you remember that, you’ll be able to quickly spot all of the washing symbols such as hand washing with a hand, and delicate cycle with two steady lines (not a lot of friction please). Finally, don’t wash equals a giant x over top of the wash tub.
The temperature is represented with a dot which you can remember as the degree° symbol. Most hot-water heaters are set to 140° F, but a laundromat may use temperatures closer to 158°. So for most of us the four and five dots will mean we need to use hot water. Since most well water is around 58°, cold water isn’t represented on these symbols.
Drying Symbols
The drying symbols use a square box for the dryer and a circle to represent the dryer drum. For, dry clean only, they take the circle out of the dryer. As for hang drying, they put a clothesline inside the dryer, and for drying flat, they add a flat line to the dryer. Of course, the dot represents the degree symbol once again for low, med, and high.
So just remember, washer symbols = washer tub, and drying symbols = dryer.
Bleaching Laundry Care Symbols
The Bleaching laundry care symbol may seem a little weird. I mean, after all, why use a triangle for bleach? Well, after all, bleach is a hazardous chemical, and comes with lots of warning signs. So, maybe they chose this symbol to represent bleach, but no matter why they chose it, it’s helpful to remember bleach as a hazard. Remember to always handle it with care and caution, therefore we think there is no better way to remember the bleach symbol than with a caution sign.
So now you can remember that if a piece of clothing contains an open triangle you can use chlorine or non chlorine bleach on it (Anything goes!). The do not bleach symbol is simply a big “X” over the caution sign and non-chlorine bleach only contains stripes which is exactly how your colored laundry will look if you use regular bleach on them!
