Care and Washing for Hoodies
By The Velocity Wear Team
Wash custom hoodies at 30 degrees, inside out, and keep them out of the tumble dryer. Brushed-back fleece shrinks with heat and the nap mats down under agitation, so the damage people blame on printing is usually a laundry problem. Embroidery survives the harshest treatment, screen prints crack if they are tumbled hot, and every garment sold in the UK and EU needs a fibre composition label sewn in.
What actually damages a hoodie in the wash?
Heat, mostly. Hot water relaxes cotton fibres and they contract as they dry, which is where shrinkage comes from. A cotton-rich 350 GSM fleece can lose a noticeable amount of body length over a few hot cycles, and it never comes back. The second culprit is the tumble dryer, which applies heat and mechanical agitation at the same time: the fleece nap flattens and pills, and a screen print that was flexible when it arrived becomes brittle and starts to craze.
Detergent matters less than people assume, with one exception. Anything containing bleach or an optical brightener will lift colour from a dyed garment body, and on a dark hoodie that shows as a patchy fade rather than an even one. Fabric conditioner is not damaging but it coats the fibres, which slowly kills the softness of a brushed back. Washing inside out protects the print surface from abrasion against zips and buttons in the same load, and it costs nothing.
Which decoration method lasts longest?
Embroidery. The mark is stitched into the fabric rather than sitting on top of it, so there is nothing to crack or peel, and it will normally outlast the garment. The failure mode is puckering around the stitch area after repeated washing, which is a backing problem at production rather than a laundry one. Screen printing comes second and is genuinely durable when cured properly; what kills it is repeated tumble drying, not washing. DTF sits close behind and has a slightly softer hand, and 3D puff is the most vulnerable because the raised ink takes the most abrasion.
None of this is a reason to choose one method by default. A retail hoodie that gets worn once a week does not need the toughest possible decoration, and a large detailed graphic is not going to work in thread. Match the method to the job and to the print position, which is covered in print placement on hoodies. What the terms on a spec sheet mean is set out in the apparel glossary.
What has to be on the care label?
Fibre composition by percentage is a legal requirement for garments sold in the UK and the EU, and it must be on a permanently attached label. Care symbols are not legally mandatory in the same way but are expected by every retailer and by most corporate buyers, and leaving them off looks like a corner cut. Country of origin appears on a separate line for goods sold in the United States. If you are selling rather than issuing, add your own brand name and a size marking to the same label.
The care label and the neck label do not have to be the same thing. A private label hoodie normally carries a woven brand label at the neck and a printed satin care label in the side seam, which keeps the neck clean while still meeting the compliance requirement. What each type costs and how long it adds is covered in neck labels on wholesale hoodies, and the compliance detail sits in care labels and clothing compliance.
What should you tell the people wearing them?
- Wash at 30 degrees on a normal cycle, inside out, with similar colours.
- Line dry flat or on a hanger; keep the garment out of the tumble dryer entirely.
- No bleach, and no detergent marketed as a whitener.
- Iron on the reverse if at all, and never directly on a print.
- Wash a new hoodie on its own the first time, because brushed fleece sheds a little lint.
A short note in the box when the order is handed out does more than the label ever will, because the label gets cut out. For staff kit, issuing two hoodies per person rather than one is the practical answer to laundry: nobody has to wash a heavy fleece overnight, so nobody puts it in the dryer. Fabric weight drives drying time more than anything else, and the weight bands are compared in GSM explained for bulk hoodies. Current per-piece prices are on the wholesale hoodies page.
