Towels are the easiest textile in the house to judge by numbers, because one number does most of the work.
GSM, and what the bands mean
GSM is grams per square metre — the weight of the fabric itself. More GSM means a denser pile, which absorbs more and takes longer to dry.
| GSM | What it suits |
|---|---|
| 300–400 | Light. Gym, beach, holiday lets with a tumble dryer. Dries fast, packs small. |
| 400–600 | The everyday band. Most household bath towels, and the sweet spot for absorbency against drying time. |
| 600–900 | Heavy, plush, hotel-feel. Lovely to use, slow to dry, and demanding on a domestic airer. |
Above 600 GSM a towel needs somewhere to dry properly. In a flat with no outside line and a small bathroom, a 500 GSM towel will serve you better than an 800.
Cotton
Long-staple cottons — Egyptian and Turkish among them — are spun from longer fibres, so they shed less, pill less and stay smoother. The term is not legally policed, so treat it as a description of a weave and a weight rather than a certificate. Combed cotton is the other useful word: it means the short fibres were removed before spinning, which is most of what stops a towel going fluffy in the wash.
The thing that ruins towels
Fabric conditioner. It works by coating fibres with a thin waxy layer, which is exactly what you do not want on something whose only job is to absorb water. A towel that has "stopped working" has almost always been softened to death.
To bring them back: wash hot with half a cup of white vinegar and no detergent, then a second wash with a little bicarbonate of soda. It strips the coating. Then stop using conditioner.
Buying in bales
A bale is a matched set — bath towels, hand towels and face cloths together, in one dye lot. The point is not the discount, though there usually is one; it is that everything matches and can be replaced in matching quantities later.
Our towel bale sets list GSM in the name. If you are buying for a business, towels for hotels covers what changes when the wash is commercial.