Salon Linens: It's All About the Towel

Customers come to your salon to feel pampered. They expect to be treated with friendly staff, professional skills, exceptional cut and color, soothing manicures and pedicures, refreshing drinks, and soft, sweet-smelling, beautiful towels.

The salon industry is one of the few places that dark-colored towels are expected. White or light-colored towels may more quickly show dye and other product stains, and can be difficult to completely clean. Purchasing dark navy, deep brown, or black towels can increase the longevity of your salon linen. You can still decide on light towels, but you’ll need to be prepared to re-invest in them often to keep them soft and stain-free.

How you launder your towels will decide how long they last, regardless of the color. It is very important that you never mix your light and dark towels, wraps, etc. together. Towels are made of a tiny looped fiber weave known as terry cloth, and the very thing about terry cloth that makes it so absorbent and soft also creates a lot of lint. If you mix your darks and lights, the darks will immediately look dulled, and chances are very good your light-colored towels will have a gray cast thanks to the dyes in the dark towels.

Wash your salon towels in warm, but not hot, water. Water that is too hot will cause the towels to lose some of their plushness with each wash, and they’ll quickly come to feel like sandpaper. It is tempting to use liquid fabric softener in your towel wash loads, and you can as long as it’s hypoallergenic and fragrance-free. We recommend that your detergent meet these same criteria because you never know what your customers might be sensitive to. White linens can be bleached, but chlorine bleach can be another harsh smell in the midst of a salon, and bleach can speed up that sandpaper effect in the cloth.

Drying your towels is easy, again on warm instead of hot, and it is a good idea to use a fabric softener sheet with your drying load. Make sure your dryer’s lint trap is completely clear. If not, you could end up with the same light lint problem as if you’d washed darks and lights together.

In the end, it’s important to remember that everything your customers experience in your salon impacts their opinion and your reputation. When it’s time to replace your salon towels, don’t hesitate. It could mean the difference for a satisfied client.