Professional textile care symbols
The circle is not addressed to you. It is a message to a professional cleaner about which solvent to use — and one of its letters is not dry cleaning at all.
In detail
The circle is the only care symbol written for somebody other than the person reading the label. Its letters tell a professional cleaner which process to use, and the originating body says so plainly: they 'give information in particular on the solvents that can be used'. P MEANS TETRACHLOROETHENE — perchloroethylene, the usual dry-cleaning solvent — plus everything permitted under F. F MEANS HYDROCARBONS, the heavy benzines: a narrower permission. A BAR means a mild process, with stringent limits on added humidity, mechanical action and temperature. A crossed circle means do not dry clean. W IS THE ONE PEOPLE MISREAD, because it is not dry cleaning at all. It denotes PROFESSIONAL WET CLEANING — treatment in WATER by a professional, using special technology, detergents and additives. A bar means mild, a double bar very mild, a crossed W not at all. Why that matters is one sentence, and it closes the question people actually arrive with: the requirements placed on the professional equipment, the aids and the finishing methods CANNOT BE ACHIEVED IN HOUSEHOLD WASHING MACHINES. A W is not permission to wash it at home. It says water is possible in the right hands.
Sources for this page
Sources
GINETEX, The International Association for Textile Care Labelling · Standards body
Relied on for: That the circle covers professional dry and wet cleaning and its letters name permitted solvents; that P is tetrachloroethene plus all solvents under F, F is hydrocarbons, and a bar means a mild process with limits on humidity, mechanical action and temperature; that W is professional wet cleaning in water; and that its requirements cannot be achieved in household washing machines. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — Sprint 28 read all thirty pages: the fold-out table on pages 1-2, then Basic Principles, Washing, Bleaching, Drying, Ironing, Professional Textile Care and Labelling on pages 6-24. Earlier sprints had read the fold-out table only. Supports a wider statement — our claim was widened. The register held this as a one-page symbol table for four sprints. It is a thirty-page booklet, and the pages nobody had opened carry the principles rather than the pictures: a label is set by the garment's most sensitive COMPONENT, not its fibre; following it guarantees no damage and guarantees nothing about stain removal; milder is always permitted; and the bleaching triangle governs ordinary detergent choice, because universal detergents contain oxygen bleach. Two whole treatment families — natural drying and professional textile care — become science concepts on it.
Last reviewed by a person on .