Avoiding heavy duty cycles, fast spins and high-heat drying can also prevent shrinkage. Use delicate cycles instead, and place delicate clothes in a mesh laundry bag for added protection. When drying, consider a low-heat or air dry setting. When in doubt, always follow the instructions on your garment's care tag.
Letting your clothes air dry is one of the best ways to prevent them from shrinking. However, if air drying isn't an option, use the lowest heat settings on the dryer. Try to remove your clothes while they're still slightly damp then air dry them to finish. Excessive heat is damaging to fabrics.
To stay on the safe side, use the tumble dryer at the LOWEST setting or on the normal setting BUT on a shorter cycle. This will prevent shrinkage as well as damages altogether.
Activewear, loosely woven garments, silk, and items embellished with beads or embroidery are best dried on the delicate or gentle cycle. The low heat helps keep your clothes safe during the drying process, as these garments are prone to melting or stretching under high heat.
What is Tumble Dry Low? This setting is commonly known as the delicate/gentle option. It's a low temperature that's safest for delicate clothes, or items like wool and nylon. Keep in mind, this setting will increase your drying time.
Delicates: Low heat, so drying time will be longer. It is best to use this setting to use for delicate fabrics. Permanent Press: Medium heat while drying and is best used for colored fabrics.
2. Bras and Delicates. Sometimes your delicates are, in fact, too delicate to throw in the dryer. Not everyone knows this, but the heat and agitation of a dryer can actually damage a bra's elasticity and shape, potentially melting it as well.
Use the Lowest Heat Setting
Not all dryers have a tumble or air dry option, but that doesn't mean you don't have options. Simply turn your dryer's temperature knob to “low heat.” If you can't find that setting, select “delicate” or “gentle” instead.
Dry the garment.
A low-heat dryer setting will slowly shrink the garment with less risk of damage than high heat. Aggressively agitating wet wool on high heat can also lead to felting. Set the machine to a 30-minute timer. Check the garment every five minutes to monitor how much it shrinks.
If you lay your wet garment flat to dry after washing, no additional shrinkage will occur and the fibers in your clothing will de-swell and reform to their original size. However, if you machine dry the clothing, it can indeed shrink for good.
These include fiber content, excess moisture, and heat and agitation. Fiber content – Certain natural fibers, such as wool and cotton, are more likely to shrink than others. Wool fibers are covered in scales, and when these scales come into contact with heat and moisture, they mesh together, causing fabrics to shrink.
Cotton, linen and denim are hardier natural fabrics that will fare better in the dryer. Does polyester shrink in the dryer? Usually not — synthetics like polyester, nylon and acrylic are generally safe to tumble dry, although at high heat they will also be in danger of shrinking.
It's absolutely normal for clothes made from 100% cotton to shrink, especially if they haven't been pre-shrunk. Pre-shrunk cotton will generally only shrink 2-5%. Non pre-shrunk cotton, on the other hand, can shrink as much 20% if you're not careful. This is only true for 100% cotton, however.
Heat is the main culprit when it comes to shrinking and warping the lovely natural fibers in your 100% cotton clothing. Instead, use a clothing rack (they come in many sizes and configurations) or hang items outside away from direct sunlight. If you must use the dryer, pick a cycle without heat.
It's always best to resort to air-drying delicate materials, as opposed to machine drying. But you can use air-dry settings on most residential and commercial dryers. We've outlined some of our top tips for drying your delicates below.
A normal drying cycle can add around 45 minutes to your laundry routine for a total washing and drying time of about an hour and 45 minutes. Drying cycle times can vary, with delicates cycles taking around 15 minutes and heavy duty towels cycles taking close to 3 hours.
The delicate wash cycle uses high levels of cold water and a low spin speed for carefully tending to undergarments and delicate fabrics that need to be handled with care, like lace, lingerie, or silk neckties.
The chance of cotton shrinking increases the warmer you wash. At 90 degrees, the fabric will shrink more than at 60 degrees. Do you want to prevent shrinkage? Then preferably wash lower than 60 degrees.
There isn't a specific temperature that clothes shrink at in the washing machine or tumble dryer. Natural fibres such as wool can shrink even at cold temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius, whereas synthetic fibres should not shrink at all unless exposed to temperatures of at least 90 degrees Celsius.
Unfortunately, certain fibers can shrink and weaken in hot (above 130 degrees Fahrenheit) water, but won't get a deep, thorough cleaning in anything considered too cold (between 60 to 80 degrees).
Most dryers come with four main heat levels: air fluff (no heat), delicate/gentle (low heat), permanent press (medium heat), and normal/cottons (high heat).
But that's not a reason to default from normal to the delicate setting for everything just to play it safe, says Campbell. “Although gentle cycles are necessary for fragile fabrics and items with delicate decorations, they won't do a good job cleaning heavily soiled clothing and bedding,” she explains.
Tumble dry low (or Delicate/Gentle cycle) is ideal for loosely woven fabrics or anything with embellishment, like beading, sequins and iron-on decals (sports jerseys). It's especially important to dry spandex/exercise clothing on low heat because it helps retain the garment's fit and performance.