Polyester
A synthetic fibre that resists the chemistry which degrades cotton and wool, and is instead limited by heat — and it holds oily soil more stubbornly than either.
Precautions
- Check the manufacturer's instructions
In detail
Polyester is a synthetic polyester fibre, and its cleaning profile is close to the inverse of wool's. It has no protein to hydrolyse and no cellulose chain to oxidise, so alkaline detergents, enzymes and — within reason — bleaching agents do far less to it than to natural fibres; the laundering study that measured cotton losing up to twenty-nine per cent of its tensile strength over a hundred wash cycles found blended fabric losing around twenty per cent, and the blend's advantage came from the polyester content. Its limits are thermal and its weakness is oil. Polyester softens and can be permanently creased or glazed by heat well below what cotton tolerates, which is why the iron and tumble-dryer settings matter more than the wash temperature. And because the fibre is itself oleophilic, oily and greasy soil partitions into it rather than sitting on it, so body oils and food grease are harder to remove from polyester than from cotton and are the usual reason a synthetic garment retains odour after washing. Higher wash temperatures help with that specifically, which puts the two constraints in direct tension and makes the care label the deciding voice.
Properties
Sensitivity
- Alkalis
- Not known
- Chlorine bleach
- Not known
- Heat
- Recorded
- Abrasion
- Not known
- Porous
- Not known
“Not known” means CleaningHQ has not established this, not that the material is unaffected.
Why
- Polyester is explained by How care labels work
Sprint 28. The fibre appears at TWO ironing settings, which is the point rather than a contradiction.
- Polyester is explained by Adsorption of odour molecules
Sprint 27. The other half of the same finding: poor adsorption means more released.
Related
- Polyester is commonly affected by Perspiration
- Polyester is commonly affected by Sunscreen
Hacks and claims involving this
- Hotter washes clean better Disputed
- Lifting candle wax with a warm iron and paper Unresolved
- Using laundry detergent on a carpet stain Does not work
- The dots on a care label are just a rough guide Does not work
- Orange sunscreen marks are rust Does not work
Sources for this page
Sources
Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio), 2023 · Scientific literature
Relied on for: That fifty-fifty cotton-polyester blends lost less tensile strength across repeated laundering than one hundred per cent cotton fabrics. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — Abstract; the tensile strength and limiting viscosity number results; and the conclusions. Supports a narrower statement — our claim was reduced. This is the first scientific-literature source in the register and it settled a field CleaningHQ had recorded as conflicting: cotton's bleach sensitivity is now known, because cumulative cellulose damage from chlorine is measured rather than asserted. The narrowing is that the study is of INDUSTRIAL laundering — higher concentrations and frequencies than a domestic wash — so CleaningHQ cites it for the direction and relative size of the effect and explicitly not for any domestic threshold. It also supplies the polyester-blend durability comparison used in the fabrics vertical.
What CleaningHQ cannot answer yet
These are recorded questions about this subject that we have not yet researched to a standard we would publish.
- Remove oily soil from textiles
- Remove protein and residue staining from collars and underarms
- Tumble drying suitability for polyester
- Remove set oily staining from textiles
- Clean synthetic and textile footwear
- Remove tannin staining from a synthetic fibre
- Remove aluminium salt and oil residues from fabric
- Remove adhesive polymer from fabric
- Clean upholstered furniture
- Clean automotive textile upholstery
Last reviewed by a person on .