Jan 2024 | How to

Looking after & loving your linen

You have invested in beautiful, high-quality linen bedding – congratulations, it’s well worth the investment!

Linen is a luxurious fabric that has been admired for its comfort and aesthetic for thousands of years.

As soon as you climb between your linen sheets, if it’s your first time, you will understand what all the fuss is about. Soft, cosy, breathable and durable, linen will keep you warm when it’s cold and keep you cool when it’s hot – it performs as a natural insulator by regulating temperature.

To ensure you can love sleeping in your linen sheets for a long, long time, it’s important to look after them. Here are some well-researched tips.

Use a luke-warm, gentle wash cycle

To help extend the life of your linen bedding, we suggest you use a warm, gentle machine wash on a short cycle together with a mild, gentle textile washing detergent. Remove them from the machine as soon as the cycle finishes and give them a gentle shake to release creases and excess fibres.
How often to wash? That’s the question. Studies suggest we should be washing our bed sheets once a week to help them remain fresh and bacteria-free.

Forget fabric softeners

Fabric softeners often leave a coating on fabrics and in the case of flax linen, will then reduce breathability and absorbency & we don’t want that!

Fabric softeners will reduce linen’s moisture-wicking abilities. Linen naturally gets softer with every wash, so you can forget fabric softeners!

Ban bleaching agents

Eek, bleach! Being an all-natural fabric, linen is susceptible to fading and discolouration if it comes into contact with harsh chemicals. Bleaching agents can be the cause of this chemical reaction, including the bleaching agents that can be found in face creams and ointments (ever wondered why your light-coloured sheets and pillowcases went a little yellow?). Bleaching agents can weaken linen’s natural strength, breaking down the fabric, so it’s best to keep them away from your linen.

Linen loves a gentle tumble

Your linen bedding loves a little tumble dry. Be sure to use a low warm gentle heat setting (a hot setting may cause shrinkage) and remove your linen bedding from the tumble dryer as soon as it is dry, this will help avoid excessive wrinkling.

If you prefer to dry your linen bedding naturally, be sure to hang it out in the shade to prolong use. Sunlight can cause linen fibres to become brittle, weakening the fabric’s overall strength and potentially induce fading.

Don’t be nervous about seeing some lint accumulation in your dryer’s filter after your first few tumble dries. These are just the excess fibres releasing and it’s perfectly normal – in fact, we encourage a gentle tumble dry as a part of your first few washes of your new linen bedding.

Treat yourself to more than one set of linen sheets

While Linen sheets are a beautifully strong natural fibre and are intended to be used for many years, like your favourite clothing items or your favourite pair of shoes, the more you use your linen bedding without rotating sheet sets, the more you will wear the fabric down. We suggest having several sets of sheets and rotating sets each time you wash them.

How to store your linen

Ensure your linen bedding is fully dry before storing, we suggest you then neatly fold your linen and store it in a dry cupboard (avoid humidity with any of your bedding fabrics). If you like being really organised, you could store your suki. bed linen in the linen tote bag you received it in. This will also help protect your lovely fresh linen while being stored.

Linen bedding looks best in a naturally relaxed, cosy, crumpled way, so ironing is not necessary – if you really want to iron, be sure to use a very low setting on your iron.

Your bed will look naturally fabulous & stylish with your linen slightly crumpled, just willing you to jump in – love your linen!

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