About FabricCareLab

Every wash load quietly asks the same handful of questions. What temperature is actually safe for this fabric? How full should the drum really be? How much detergent is enough without leaving residue behind? How long will this take to dry, and on which setting? What’s the right first move on a stain before it sets in for good? And how much is this going to shrink once it’s through the wash and the dryer? None of these questions are hard on their own, but getting them right by habit and guesswork — instead of by the fabric in front of you — is how good clothes end up felted, faded, or gone a size smaller than they used to be.

FabricCareLab exists to put a straight answer in front of you before the wash starts, not after the damage is done. Instead of long articles you have to read end to end, the site is built around a set of small, single-purpose calculators, each aimed at one decision. The Wash Temperature & Care Guide gives a temperature range, cycle, and spin speed for cotton, linen, wool, silk, polyester, nylon, acrylic, and spandex blends, adjusted for soil level and color protection. The Laundry Load Size Calculatorturns your washer’s rated capacity into a recommended maximum weight for a normal, delicate, bulky, or heavily soiled load. The Detergent Dosing Calculator scales a dose by load weight, water hardness, soil level, and detergent concentration, instead of guessing a capful. The Drying Time Estimator estimates how long a load takes to dry by fabric, drying method, and the spin speed the wash used. The Stain Removal Guide matches a stain and a fabric to the right rinse temperature and a step-by-step method. And the Fabric Shrinkage Calculator predicts how much a garment will shrink, or works backward from a target finished size to what you should buy or cut.

Beyond the calculators, the blog and learn section cover washing basics, fabric types, detergents, drying and care, stain removal, and sorting and machine care, and the Fabric & Laundry Museum is a browsable collection on natural fibers, synthetic fibers, laundry tools and machines history, and textile care symbols and labels, with every entry, image, and fact drawn from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

A few things worth stating plainly. FabricCareLab is an independent site, not affiliated with any appliance manufacturer, detergent brand, or textile-care certification body. It is supported by advertising, which is how the tools stay free with no account required. Every result the tools produce — a temperature range, a load size, a dose, a drying time, a stain-removal step, a shrinkage percentage — is a general estimate built on the numbers you enter and on common fabric-care conventions, not a professional or manufacturer determination. Garment care labels, appliance manuals, and product instructions vary, so always defer to the specific garment or product in front of you when it says something different. If a tool looks off, or there’s a calculator you wish existed, the contact page is the place to say so.