What you can expect with linen fabric ..
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Expect some initial shedding.
Linen is a natural product, made of flax linen fibres, as you start to interact with your linen (use, washing, drying etc.) these fibres will get disturbed and the tiny fibre particles will surface. This looks like fluff or lint but is just the natural wearing in process. Don’t worry, it’s just your linen doing what it naturally does, which is shedding excess and unused fibres. This will be emphasised with darker products, as there is more dye built into the fabric, and may even look like fading.
2. How to deal with shedding.
Don’t worry if you see shedding, its part of linens natural process. However, if you want to speed this process up, you can run your flax linen sheets through a cold gentle machine wash a couple of times, followed by air drying. Avoid tumble drying, as this aggravates the linen fibres and can cause more shedding. Avoid softeners and any other cleaning products as these can be abrasive on the soft, delicate natural linen fibres.
3. Expect some fading and colour variation in linen.
Fading of screen printed coloured linen will occur over time and to slow this down we highly suggest keeping your linen out of direct sunlight. Wash on a cool cycle and always hang linen bedding and tableware inside out on a shaded clothes line.
Like anything natural, different seasons and areas will produce slightly different variants of flax, and this in turn will respond differently to the dying and manufacturing process. Like shedding, we see the beauty in this as being perfectly imperfect, but just be aware that you may see colour variation across different linen items and even items in the same batches of linen.
4. Fitted sheets will wear quicker.
Like anything, the more it is used the quicker it will wear, so think of your fitted sheets this way and keep that in mind. Fitted sheets receive the most wear and tear, as the body moves and presses on these – so think of rotating these more often and give them some breathing space now and then.
Hopefully you find this helpful.
Also feel free to also check out our Blog on How to care for Linen sheets