How to Keep Denim Jeans from Shrinking

The perfect pair of denim jeans is already hard enough to find, so the last thing you want is for them to shrink. If you are careful about the fabric content of your jeans and take precautions while washing them, your jeans should retain their original size.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 100% cotton denim
• clothes drying rack
• gentle detergent or laundry soap

1. The first step to avoid shrinking denim jeans is to make sure the fabric content is 99% to 100% cotton. Past experience with jeans, whether they were "stretch" jeans or not, quickly showed that denim with more the 1% spandex or other stretchable fabrics shrank much more quickly than 100% cotton jeans, and they also lost more from the size, as well.

2. Once you have perfectly fitted jeans, check that your laundry detergent is not too harsh; many of the liquid detergents are harder on clothes than their powdered counterparts. A quick web search, like "best laundry detergent for jeans," should bring up plenty of feedback. Not only would overly strong detergent encourage shrinking, but it can also damage the fabric and dyes, fading your jeans before their time.

3. Use cold water to wash your jeans. Not only does it protect clothes from shrinking in hotter water, but it also uses less hot water, which can save money on the energy bill.

4. Hanging or drying jeans flat on a drying rack is the single most important step in avoiding shrinking jeans. The clothes dryer is responsible for most of the shrinking of clothes in the wash.

Tips & Warnings

• The nice thing about "stretch" jeans is that they can easily get looser if you hang dry them, although some will become unattractively stretched out and baggy. In this case, just put them in the dryer once in a while.
• Fabric softener is really a personal preference, some people like it, some don't, whether you like using softener or not will not really have any effect on the size of your jeans.