Fibre encyclopedia
Cotton
Also called cotton · katun · kapas · combed cotton · katun kombed · organic cotton · katun organik · kapas organik · CO
Short fibre from the seed hair of the cotton plant. It takes water in, has no stretch of its own, and is often spun with a small share of something else.
Class
Natural
Comes from
From a plant
Where it comes from
Cotton grows as fine hair on the seed of the plant. It is picked, separated from the seed, and spun into yarn. How long those fibres are decides how fine the yarn can be, which is what a label means when it says combed or carded.
How it feels to wear
Air
Air moves through the fibre easily
Water
Takes water into the fibre
Heat
Neither holds nor sheds heat
Stretch
No stretch of its own
Wear
Holds up to ordinary rubbing
Cotton takes water into the fibre itself, so it feels cool when wet and dries slowly. European labelling rules weigh cotton with an agreed moisture allowance of 8.5 per cent; the figure exists for calculating mass, not for judging anything, and it is a measure of how much water the fibre holds. Cotton does not return to shape after it is pulled, so the places that stretch often, knees and elbows, keep the shape they were pulled into.
Care
- Wash cold or lukewarm.
- Most of the shrinking happens in the first wash unless the cloth was pre-shrunk.
- Dry in shade. Direct sun fades dye.
- Iron while slightly damp.
Care symbols on the label follow the ISO 3758 code, so the number inside the tub is a maximum temperature rather than a recommended one.
End of life
Recycling route
Mechanical recycling
Mechanical recycling shreds cloth back into fibre. Shredding shortens the fibre, so the result is usually spun together with new cotton to hold a yarn. What happens to cotton after it is thrown away depends on the conditions where it lands, and that is not something a label can tell you.
In a blend
A few per cent of elastane is enough to put a cotton piece outside cotton mechanical recycling, because fibres spun together cannot be separated again.
Skin notes
Mechanical
Prickle from cloth is a mechanical effect that tracks fibre diameter. Cotton fibre sits far below the diameter range studied for prickle in wool.
Chemical
What sits against the skin on a cotton cloth is often not the fibre but the dye and the finish, such as a wrinkle-resist resin that releases formaldehyde. A label declares none of them.
If your skin reacts to a garment, a dermatologist and patch testing are what can answer it. A label cannot, and neither can this page.
What the label cannot tell you
The label says cotton and stops there. It does not say where the cotton grew, who spun it, which dyes were used, or which finishes sit on the surface. A label that says organic cotton names the way the plant was grown; the fibre it names is still cotton, and the rest of that list stays unanswered.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 on textile fibre names and related labelling, Annex I. Checked 22 August 2026
- Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011, Annex IX, agreed allowances. Checked 22 August 2026
- ISO 3758:2023, Textiles, care labelling code using symbols. Checked 22 August 2026
- Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH), Annex XVII entry 72, substances in textile articles in contact with skin, applying from 1 November 2020. Checked 22 August 2026
Written from primary sources and in our own words. Where a figure could not be traced to a source anyone can open, it is not printed here.
Read the label you are holding
The scan surface reads one care label and names which questions it answers and which it leaves out. A passport says for one specific piece what a label cannot: the composition with its percentages, where the cloth came from, who worked on it, how to repair it and where it goes next.