Fibre encyclopedia
Nylon
Also called nylon · nilon · polyamide · poliamida · PA · polyamide nylon · nylon polyamide
Melt-spun fibre with amide links in the chain. It holds up to rubbing longer than the other common clothing fibres.
Class
Synthetic
Comes from
From oil or gas
Where it comes from
Polyamide is spun from a melt as polyester is, with amide links along the chain instead of ester links. Two polymers share the name on labels, nylon 6 and nylon 6.6, and they are made from different starting materials.
How it feels to wear
Air
Decided by the knit or weave, not by the fibre
Water
Takes in a little water
Heat
Neither holds nor sheds heat
Stretch
A little stretch of its own
Wear
Holds up to hard rubbing
Nylon takes in more water than polyester and far less than cotton, so it dries more slowly than polyester and much faster than cotton. Its resistance to rubbing is why it goes into socks, bag straps, linings and rope. Sunlight breaks the chain over time, and a nylon cloth left in the sun loses strength where the light falls.
Care
- Wash cold and dry in shade.
- Keep away from the hot dryer and the iron.
- Wash separately at first; nylon picks up loose dye from other cloth.
Nylon takes up stray dye readily, which is why a white nylon lining greys after a few mixed washes.
End of life
Recycling route
Chemical recycling
Nylon 6 can be broken back down into the monomer it was built from, and that route runs on clean uniform waste such as fishing net and factory offcuts rather than on mixed clothing. Nylon releases microfibres when washed, as the other melt-spun fibres do.
In a blend
The chemical route needs a clean single-polymer input, so nylon inside a blend does not reach it.
Skin notes
Mechanical
Filament nylon is smooth. Where it is knitted tight, as in a sock or a legging, friction and warmth at the surface rise with the fit rather than with the fibre.
Chemical
The base polymer is close to unreactive. Nylon is dyed with acid and disperse dyes, and neither the class nor the finish appears on the label.
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 nylon or polyamide. It does not say whether it is nylon 6 or nylon 6.6, and those are different polymers with different recycling routes.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 on textile fibre names and related labelling, Annex I. Checked 22 August 2026
- ISO 2076:2021, Textiles, man-made fibres, generic names. Checked 22 August 2026
- European Commission Joint Research Centre, techno-scientific assessment of the management options for used and waste textiles in the European Union, 2023
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.