How Are Wrinkle Free Sheets Made?

This is one of my favorite questions we get about once a week. Usually it starts out as ‘I used to have a sheet set that never wrinkled – used it for 20 years’, etc. So let’s go through what makes sheets become less wrinkled:

Fabric Content – Sheets are typically made with cotton or polyester. Other sheet fabric choices include silk, performance fabrics like TENCEL and a few others. Cotton is a natural material that can be woven in many ways including percale, sateen, twill, etc. Cotton does tend to wrinkle in most cases and some newer forms and weaving methods have improved any wrinkling issues. Polyester is a very wrinkle free friendly fabric that holds up well – but has the bad habit of causing skin irritation and feeling warm against the skin. The combination of cotton and polyester usually is a happy medium that offers the feel of cotton but the wrinkle resistant nature of polyester. When shopping in stores you will see terms like ‘cotton rich’ – this means there is more cotton then polyester in the sheets fabric content. In the past dozen years high performance fabrics like TENCEL Lyocell Cotton offer all the benefits of cotton poly sheeting but excellent moisture wicking and amazingly silky smooth (great for ecezema and pseoriasis).

Fabric Finishing – sheeting fabrics can have chemical topical treatments which basically give them a slicker feel and reduces sheet wrinkling. The downside is that this is a chemical treatment and cause skin irritations. Usually you will see chemical treatments on cotton cloth while polyester usually does not need it. High performance sheeting materials like TENCEL Lyocell does not need chemical treatments either as the material is naturally wrinkle resistant.

Fabric Care & Treatment – We would recommend that any sheeting material never be left in the dryer once finished. This alone paired with some quick folding will keep sheet wrinkling to a minimum.

So what do we recommend?

Or favorite sheeting material is TENCEL Lyocell Cotton blends which give you all of the necessary requirements. We do remind customers to not leave them in the dryer as well.

Of course if you are really neurotic you can iron your sheets – try a rotary iron like this one from Miele.