How to Sort Laundry: What Can Go in the Washer Together?

Sorting doesn’t mean owning four hampers. It means a quick check before loading to see what belongs together. Here’s how:

1. Read the label. It’s usually sewn in on the inside. US care labels usually give words, often with symbols, such as cold, warm or hot for the water. On the international wash-tub symbol, which you may see on imported clothes, the number in the tub is the highest temperature allowed, one bar underneath means “gentle,” and two bars mean “very gentle.”
2. Sort by color: whites and lights, colors, darks.
3. Check the material: delicates like wool, silk or lace don’t go with sturdy items like jeans and towels.
4. Soil level and temperature: heavily soiled items get their own load. In every pile, the item with the lowest temperature sets the cycle.

A hand in the tub means hand wash, and a crossed-out tub means “do not wash” — items like these don’t belong in a mixed machine load. A circle, with letters inside on some labels, is information for professional cleaners only. If a wash tub next to it is not crossed out, you can wash the item yourself.

The symbols don’t tell you whether an item bleeds dye or what you can mix it with. But if the label says something like “wash separately,” follow it. Otherwise, the sorting rules help.

Better not: wash whites and colors separately. Even a single strongly dyed item can tint the whole white load. The classic example is the red sock.

In practice, very light shades like light gray, pale pink or light blue can often be washed with whites, as long as they aren’t new. When in doubt, put them with the colors. Dark shades like black, brown and navy bleed especially strongly, and bold colors like red don’t belong with whites either.

And darks with colors? A German consumer group, Stiftung Warentest, advises separating dark items from lighter colored laundry. Striped, plaid or multicolored items, shirts included, don’t go with the whites, but with colors or darks.

A new item often releases excess dye in its first washes. Consumer testers in Germany recommend washing new textiles that aren’t colorfast separately or only with laundry of the same color. Colorfast means the color stays in the fabric during washing.

This applies especially to dark jeans, red, black and neon colors. Secondhand items with a history you don’t know get the same treatment for their first wash. Here’s how:

• Wash the first few times alone or with the same color.
• Wash on cold, and never warmer than the label allows.
• Turn the item inside out, so the inside faces out. That protects the surface.

A quick test before the first wash: put the item in cold or warm water for about 30 minutes. If the water changes color, the item will bleed in the machine too. Then wash it alone or only with the same color until the water stays clear.

Work pants covered in oil don’t belong with your hoodie. Consumer testers in Germany recommend washing very heavily soiled items, such as oil-stained work clothes, separately so the dirt doesn’t transfer to other items. The same goes for cleaning rags, dog blankets and muddy sweatpants after soccer practice.

Normally sweaty workout clothes don’t count. Performance shirts and leggings do fine with other synthetic items, but not with towels, whose lint clings to microfibers.

Wash workwear with a protective function, such as high-visibility or flame-resistant clothing, only according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If your employer provides it, ask there how to care for it.

Best not. Towels shed lint, jeans have rivets (small metal buttons) and zippers, and both are heavy. If you really have to: turn the jeans inside out, close the zippers, empty the pockets and don’t cram the washer full.

Towels are best washed with towels or with sheets, if color and temperature match. Clothes made of other materials often need a different temperature or spin speed, and that’s exactly what you sort by.

What can be washed together depends on color, material and temperature. This usually works, as long as the labels don’t say otherwise:

• Towels and sheets: yes, with the same color and temperature.
• Whites and colors, lights and darks: no.
• Jeans and towels: better not.
• Athletic wear and towels: better not.
• Wool or silk with sturdy items: no.
• A new, strongly dyed item with light ones: no.

Sturdy items made of cotton or linen can handle friction, delicates can’t. Keep wool, silk, rayon (viscose), lace, underwire bras and tights away from jeans, towels and workwear.

Wool gets its own small load: wool or hand wash cycle, on cold (up to 86 °F / 30 °C) and a wool detergent. Delicate items and small pieces like baby socks go into a mesh laundry bag, a bag made of net fabric. Close hook-and-loop fasteners first.

Load size matters too: according to German environmental authorities, delicates should fill only about a quarter of the washer, wool about a fifth. So delicates need their own small load.

Two items need different temperatures? Then pick the lowest. The German detergent industry association gives this rule: for a mixed load, always use the lowest recommended temperature and spin speed. If one item says cold and another warm, wash both on cold. On labels with numbers, 30 °C (86 °F) and 40 °C (104 °F) both run at 30 °C (86 °F), the cold setting.

Often, less than the label allows is enough anyway: according to German environmental authorities, lightly soiled colors usually come clean at 20–30 °C (68–86 °F), whites usually already at 40 °C (104 °F).

The exception is hygiene. Laundry from sick people, meaning clothes, bedding and towels, should be washed at 60 °C (140 °F) or more with heavy-duty detergent (for whites and sturdy items), according to the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, and then dried thoroughly. That applies if the label allows 60 °C (140 °F) and oxygen bleach, a non-chlorine bleach. Look for a heavy-duty detergent with oxygen bleach, usually a powder: in Germany, only powders contain it, liquid products don’t. Check the package. In everyday life, you rarely need a boil wash, a very hot cycle at 90–95 °C (194–203 °F).

Sort at home, into two or three bags, ideally right as you undress. Whether there are two of you, a family or roommates: sort by color, not by person. Then you don’t have to think at the machine.

Little laundry, or does every cycle cost money? Collect laundry until the washer is full, as ENERGY STAR advises too. If you really can only run one load, put colors and darks that have been washed many times together: at the lowest temperature on the labels, on cold (at most 86 °F / 30 °C), and on the gentlest cycle any of the items requires. Whites, new items, wool and heavily soiled items wait for the next round. “Everything on warm” only works if every label allows 104 °F (40 °C) and nothing white, new, woolen or heavily soiled is in the load.

At a laundromat or shared machine, look inside the washer first: a forgotten sock from the previous person can tint your light load.

The label got cut out because it itches, faded away, or was never there on a thrift-store find. Sort items without a label cautiously. That means cold (at most 86 °F / 30 °C), delicate or gentle cycle, low spin, the first few times alone or with a similar color, and not in the dryer. Do the water test from above first.

A tip for the future: photograph the label before you cut it off.

No. In a 2010 test by a Swiss consumer TV program, six of seven color catcher sheets made no noticeable difference compared with detergent alone. A color detergent did better, meaning a detergent without oxygen bleach for colored clothes.

For colors, a color detergent is enough; for wool, a wool detergent. For whites, a heavy-duty powder detergent works if the bleach triangle on the label isn’t crossed out.