Care Guide
A garment's life does not end when it arrives. Most of it happens afterwards — in the wash, on the line, in a drawer, and eventually on a second child.
This page is how to make that life as long as possible. None of it is complicated, and most of it comes down to washing less often and washing cooler than you think you need to.
The short version
| Wash | max. 30°C, inside out, with similar colours |
| Detergent | A mild one, and less than the box suggests |
| Softener | Not needed on cotton — it coats the fibres and reduces absorbency |
| Dry | Air dry, out of direct sun. Reshape while damp |
| Iron | Low heat, inside out or under a cloth |
| Bleach | Never |
| Dry clean | Not needed |
| Shrinkage | Up to 5% in the first washes — normal, and reduced by a cool wash and no dryer |
The care label sewn into each garment is the definitive instruction. Where this page and the label ever disagree, follow the label.
1) Washing
Wash at max. 30°C, inside out, with similar colours.
Organic cotton and rib both hold their shape better in a cooler wash than a hot one. Washing inside out protects the outer face — the side that shows — from the abrasion of the drum, and protects any dye or print on it.
A few things that make more difference than people expect:
- Wash less often. Children's clothes are frequently washed because they were worn, not because they are dirty. Airing a jumper overnight is often enough, and every wash you skip is one the garment does not have to survive.
- Fill the drum properly. A half-empty machine lets garments tumble further and rub harder. A full — not crammed — load is gentler on everything in it.
- Use less detergent. Excess does not rinse out completely; it stays in the fibres, stiffens them and dulls colour over time.
- Fasten and close everything. Zips and rough fastenings are the main cause of pilling and snags in a mixed load.
- Skip the fabric softener. On cotton it coats the fibre, reduces how well the cloth absorbs and breathes, and does nothing a cooler wash and a good shake out will not do better.
Do not use bleach or any whitening product, including the “colour-safe” kind. Organic cotton has not been through the aggressive chemical finishing that makes conventional cotton tolerate it.
2) Drying
Air dry wherever you can, out of direct sunlight.
Sunlight fades dye, and it is harsher on natural fibres than most people realise. A shaded line, an airer indoors or a flat towel all work.
Heavier pieces — sweatshirts, hoodies and joggers in French terry — hold water in their looped inner face and are heavy when wet. Dry those flat, or over a rail rather than pegged at the shoulders, so the weight of the water does not pull the shape out of them.
If you need the tumble dryer, use the lowest heat setting and take the garment out slightly damp. High heat is the single fastest way to shrink cotton and to wear it out — the lint in the filter is fibre that used to be in the cloth.
3) Ironing
If you need to, use a low heat setting, ideally inside out or with a cloth between the iron and the fabric.
Most Albor pieces do not need ironing at all. Shaking a garment out before hanging it, and taking it off the line before it is bone dry, does most of the work.
Never iron directly over a print or over embroidery. Turn the garment inside out and press from the back.
4) Shrinkage — what to expect
Organic cotton shrinks. Albor garments can shrink by up to 5%, almost all of it in the first one or two washes, and mostly in length rather than width.
This is normal and it is not a fault. It is what unprocessed natural fibre does when it meets warm water for the first time — the yarn relaxes back from the tension it was knitted under. Cotton that does not shrink at all has usually been chemically treated so that it cannot, and that treatment is exactly what we have chosen to avoid.
To keep it to a minimum:
- Wash at 30°C. Heat is what makes cotton contract, and most shrinkage people blame on the wash actually happened in the dryer.
- Skip the tumble dryer. One hot cycle will do more shrinking than several cool washes.
- Reshape while damp. Pull the garment gently back to its shape before it dries, and it will hold most of it.
Every measurement published in our Size Guide is the garment as it arrives, before its first wash.
5) Stains
Children produce stains. This is not a design flaw in the child.
- Act while it is fresh. Almost every stain is easy wet and difficult dry.
- Blot, do not rub. Rubbing spreads the stain and disturbs the weave.
- Cold water first. Heat sets protein stains — milk, egg, blood, grass — permanently.
- Treat from the back of the fabric, pushing the stain out the way it came in rather than through the cloth.
- Check before drying. Heat will fix anything you missed, so make sure it is gone before the garment goes near a dryer or a radiator.
6) Storing and passing on
Store clean and completely dry. Traces of food or body oil that are invisible now will oxidise into yellow marks over a season in a box, and damp is what breeds mildew.
Fold knitted cotton rather than hanging it. Hangers stretch the shoulders of jersey and terry over time.
Then pass it on. Our sizes are built in two-year bands and the cuts are gender-neutral for exactly this reason — a garment that fits a four-year-old has a reasonable chance of fitting a different child later. That is the point of making them this way.
7) Fabric by fabric
| Fabric | Where you will find it | What it needs |
| Single jersey, approx. 170 g/m² | T-shirts and long-sleeve T-shirts | 30°C inside out. Dries fast. Reshape while damp |
| French terry, approx. 300–320 g/m² | Sweatshirts, hoodies, shorts and joggers | 30°C inside out. Dry flat or over a rail. Heavy when wet |
| Rib trim | Cuffs, necklines | Cooler is better. Never hang by the cuff, and never tumble hot — heat is what makes rib lose its spring |
The main jersey and French terry are 100% organic cotton. The rib trim is 95% organic cotton with 5% elastane, which is what gives a cuff and a neckline their recovery. We set that out precisely rather than rounding it up, and the full composition of every fabric is published on our Materials page.
8) Prints and embroidery
Wash inside out, at 30°C. Do not iron over the design. Do not use bleach or stain removers directly on it.
Embroidery is stitched into the cloth rather than sitting on top of it, so it lasts well — but the threads still prefer a cool wash and no tumble dryer.
9) Why washing less is worth doing
Every wash releases microfibres from clothing into the water. This is true of all textiles, natural and synthetic — the difference is what those fibres are made of and what happens to them afterwards.
We are not going to tell you to feel guilty about doing laundry. We would rather give you the useful part: washing less often, at lower temperatures, with fuller loads and no tumble dryer reduces fibre loss, saves energy, limits shrinkage and makes clothes last longer, all at the same time. The same habit does all four.
If you want the detail rather than the summary, we have written about it at length in our Journal.
