For anybody with silk products, learning about proper silk care is essential. Silk is an opulent and expensive material, but it is also quite fragile and delicate, so ensuring you employ the highest standards of silk care is absolutely vital for maintaining the quality and prolonging the longevity of your silk clothing, bedding, or upholstery! Silk care requires decent knowledge of the material you’re maintaining and its properties, so we’ve broken down the top tips for silk care here for your convenience!

Silk doesn’t require dry cleaning! A common misconception is that you cannot clean silk properly by hand washing at home. Dry cleaning is the easiest method for silk producers to advocate for and ensures that customers don’t ruin their own silk at home, which could then reflect badly on the manufacturer! But despite it commonly being recommended on the label, dry cleaning may actually not be the best solution for your silk! Dry cleaning can use high levels of heat and can use machinery which may damage the hand-rolled edges of garments like silk scarfs.

Here’s how to hand wash your silk at home without damaging or compromising the quality of your product:

Check that your silk is colourfast

Silks can come in a limitless array of colours and patterns, usually displaying the most vibrant dyes and rich hues across the fabric. But it is not guaranteed to be colourfast, meaning your beautiful patterning could run if washed! Before submerging your silk to wash, check that your colours won’t bleed by dabbing a small area with a damp cotton bud. Do not rub the fabric or you may damage it!

Pre-treat stains

Pre-treating stains is vital for proper silk care. Ideally, clean the moment the spill has taken place to get all liquids up before they have dried. Pre-treating stains is best done on top of a towel to absorb any excess liquid and use a 50/50 solution of water with silk-specific detergent! Don’t use any chemicals other than the special silk detergent or you could badly damage your material.

Set a timer

Silk cannot soak in water for very long, even if you’ve tested that it is colourfast. This is especially true if you have detergent or other chemicals in the water. You should set a timer for no longer than four minutes when you submerge your silk to hand wash. Keep the silk moving for the entire time it is submerged, and only leave in for the minimum amount of time necessary, the longer you keep the silk underwater, the more likely your colours will begin to run!

Being a premium material, you want to keep your silk fresh, clean and undamaged so you can continue to enjoy it for years to come! At DreamSilk we specialise in silk and provide only the highest quality material with the best information on silk care.