Care Symbols

Washing Machine Repair

Care Symbols

Care symbols, also called laundry symbols or wash symbols, are pictograms which are shown on the label attached to the item. They are there to show the owner what laundry processes should be applied to the garment. There are different standards used in different regions of the world, but this section concentrates on the ones used in the UK.

Some examples

laundry symbols example

There are five different types of care symbols used. The basic shapes are shown below, but each symbol has a different version depending on the laundry process.

Any symbol with a X through it, means that you should perform that operation on the garment. Do not iron, do not tumble dry etc. For washing and professional cleaning, a line or double line underneath the symbol means clean gently or very gently.

Each symbol appears in a horizontal line and should appear in the following order:

Washing Bleach Drying Ironing Professional Cleaning
wash symbols bleach symbols tumble drying symbols iron symbols professional clean symbols

Click on the name for more details on the variations of each symbol,
or build your own using the Interactive Care Label Builder


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