What does a towel represent? It signifies comfort, luxury, and, most importantly, self-pampering. Those days are long gone when people considered towels as a mere commodity.
We spend so much time following a skincare regimen and going to spas and saloons to moisturize our skin, but use the same bath towel on our face. It’s one of the biggest mistakes that most of us make.
That’s why this article presents the benefits of using separate bath and face towels for your skin and hygiene.
You must be wondering how to categorize or separate different towels. Of course, one key factor is the size, but the most influencing factor is the frequency of use. Moreover, the placement of the towels in the restroom also determines the use of a particular towel.
Read along to learn why you should separate the bath and face towel today.
Face Towels
As the name suggests, face towels, also known as washcloths, are small square towels with 13 x 13 inches general dimensions. The primary purpose of a face towel is to keep the face clean and dry.
People often mistakenly use washcloths as kitchen towels, which isn’t entirely wrong but depends on the preference. However, face towels are an integral part of your daily skincare routine, allowing you to clean and dry your face from water, soap, natural oils, and other skin product residue.
It’s categorically necessary to use a separate towel to clean your face if you don’t want the grime, dirt, and bacteria from other parts of your body to stick to your face.
Furthermore, the skin on your face is relatively more sensitive and delicate than other body parts. That’s why it’s essential to select a comfortable and soft face towel.
Lucky for you, you can find face towels made of different thread blends and fabrics, such as 100 percent organic cotton, Egyptian and Turkish cotton, bamboo blend, microfiber, and many more.
Cleaning a Face Towel
You must be wondering how often you should wash face towels. The honest answer is you should change or clean them every couple of days. It’s because the face towels encounter numerous chemicals and ingredients of soaps, makeup, face creams, face cleansers, toothpaste, dirt pollutants, skin oil, etc.
Therefore, if you don’t want breakouts, pimples, or acne on your face, you should clean your dirty face towel more often.
Furthermore, if you have oily skin prone to acne, you need to replace your face towel more often. It’s because the skin bacteria transfers back and forth to your face when you dry the face using a towel.
In addition to the regular laundry, it’s essential to keep the face towel grime- and bacteria-free by drying the towel completely between the uses. A damp or moist towel is an ideal place for yeast, mold, and bacteria to grow. Therefore, you should remove the towel from the bathroom after use and hang it outside in sunlight, allowing it to dry out in fresh air.
Bath Towels
It’s one of the most comfortable feelings to wrap yourself in a plush, soft bath towel after a refreshing shower or relaxing bath. As the name suggests, a bath towel helps you to dry off your body after the shower. That’s why you should invest your time and money in selecting the right bath towel for you.
Bath towels offer one of the largest dimensions ranging from 20 x 40 to 30 x 58 in the towel family. However, they are of smaller size compared to bath sheets that range from 35 x 60 to 40 x 70.
You can find different bath towels categorized based on color, style, texture, touch, and feel. For instance, you have a large variety of bath towels available in the market, ranging from bamboo blend to Egyptian cotton. Moreover, you can also find 100 percent cotton, Turkish cotton, and combed cotton.
Many women use bath towels to wrap their hair and use a bath sheet to clean the rest of the body.
For instance, the Mizu bath towel is made of Japanese cotton that makes it ultra-absorbent. That’s why this towel dries quickly as compared to other towels available in the market. Furthermore, it’s an allrounder bath towel offering features such as durability, softness, and bacteria-detection color-changing stripes.
One of the most common placement mistakes people make is keeping the bath towels near the shower. It can make the towel damp if multiple people use the shower daily.
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How to Select the Best Bath Towel?
When it comes to deciding on a bath towel, the primary criteria is the GSM (grams per square meter) which signifies the density of the towel. We all are familiar with the GSM concept of thread count.
A bath towel tends to be heavier if it is higher in GSM. Not only that, but it’s more absorbent and softer. That’s why a high GSM towel is relatively more expensive.
GSM usually ranges from 300 to 900, and you can conveniently decide which one to buy after reading the below GSM guide:
300 to 400 GSM
These towels are one of the most lightweight bath towels; that’s why they are thinner and don’t offer a plush feel. Moreover, these towels are coarser than the higher GSM towels, offering a sandpaper feel on the skin. That’s why these towels aren’t the best bath towels and aren’t absorbent.
400 to 620 GSM
These medium-weight towels serve as the perfect beach and bath towels. They are soft, absorbent, and are quick to dry.
620 to 900 GSM
These are the most expensive, heavy, and luxurious towels available in the market. You often five these towels in five-star hotels and spas, offering you a hug as you wrap them around yourself. However, on the downside, these towels take forever to dry because of their weight and thread count.
Why Separate Bath and Face Towel?
We spend so much time taking care of our skin and using different morning and night skincare regimens. However, we don’t pay much heed to clean and dry our freshly cleansed skin using a soft face towel.
The idea of drying your face from the same bath towel that dried other body parts is indeed gross. However, it’s not just about the germs, bacteria, or a general cleanliness issue, but also about the skincare products.
We use different products on our body, such as scrub, polisher, moisturizer, fragrances, and multiple hair products that end up on the face. Furthermore, all these products can clog the pores on your face, leading to breakouts or, in extreme cases, rashes or irritation.
Your bath towel collects all the debris from your skin, including dead skin cells, bacteria, fungus, and other oils. In adverse cases, raw or open skin with active infection on your body can spread to your face. Conversely, the makeup you remove from your face shouldn’t spread to other parts of the body.
As a result, using the bath towel on your face can lead to severe infections and acne flares.
Additionally, the skin on the face and the rest of the body is different. Your face requires a gentle and soft touch; that’s why a face towel should be made of natural fiber and no synthetic fabric.
Some bath towels are made of terry cloth which is relatively rough on the skin of your face. A terry cloth towel is an excellent exfoliant for your body; however, it may cause friction on your face leading to patches. Moreover, it can remove all the natural oils from the skin.
Should We Use Special Face Towels?
Without any doubt, a big yes, You should use a special towel for your face that has the following qualities:
- A face towel should be gentle on your skin and highly absorbent.
- You should be able to hand wash the face towel conveniently.
- A face towel needs to be resilient to multiple and heavy uses while maintaining its long-term softness.
For instance, you can select a Turkish cotton face towel if you prefer softness, absorbency, warmth, and quality. Moreover, you can go for a microfiber face towel if you want a higher absorbency rate.
Bonus: Types of Towel Fabric
The fabric used in a towel allows you to decide its role in your household.
Polyester
A polyester towel neither offers a soft feel nor is absorbent. However, a polyester towel doesn’t dry out quickly, so you can use it in the kitchen or gym.
Supima Cotton
Supima or Pima cotton comprises long threads that make this towel soft and absorbent. The high-quality material makes these towels one of the best bath towels.
Egyptian or Turkish Cotton
It’s the ultra-soft towel straight from your dreams, consisting of long threads to quickly draw out water off the body while offering a soft and plush feel. Such qualities make these towels pricier.
Bamboo
If you are an eco-friendly person who wants to buy sustainable products, the bamboo towel should be your first choice. It’s because bamboo requires fewer fertilizers and pesticides to grow as compared to cotton.
Moreover, it’s super-absorbent and doesn’t take forever to dry. Another excellent quality of the bamboo towel is its resistance to fungus and germs.
On the downside, a bamboo towel isn’t too thick and doesn’t offer a plush feel on your skin.
Modal
A modal towel is made of cellulose from beach trees, offering a 50 percent more absorption rate than cotton. Moreover, these towels don’t fade with time, qualifying as one of the best bath towels.
Organic Cotton
Organic cotton comes from eco-friendly crops harvested using sustainable methods. The towels made of organic cotton offer the same feel like regular cotton and are a perfect choice for eco-friendly people.
Microfiber Blends
These towels are relatively new in the market and are made of polyester blends. These high-tech towels are unknown for their higher absorption rate and luxurious feel. People commonly use these towels in their kitchen to clean the dishes.
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How to Clean a Bath and Face Towel?
A towel allows us to clean ourselves by drying our skin; however, a towel may trap our sweat, bacteria, body oil, and other germs when we wipe our body and face. Furthermore, keeping a wet or moist towel facilitates bacterial and fungal growth. That’s why you should clean a bath towel once a week and a face towel after a couple of days.
You must be wondering how to keep the towels clean all the time. It’s essential to remove the towel from the restroom after use and dry it in the fresh air. However, it’s possible in summers, but what about winters or rainy seasons?
That’s why you should be mindful while selecting premium-quality towels such as Mizu towels. These are smart towels that not only detect the presence of bacteria but also notify the user by changing the color.
The Mizu bath towel features light blue stripes running along with the towel that turns pink upon detecting impurities and dirt in the towel. Additionally, the towel comes coated with natural and pure silver, known for its antimicrobial properties.
Don’t Use Fabric Softener
You shouldn’t use fabric softeners after washing the towels as they leave chemical residue on the towels, reducing their absorption rate. Furthermore, it destroys your Egyptian cotton towels and converts them into crappy polyester towels.
Using Vinegar to Wash Towel
Additionally, you can use a cup of vinegar to wash the towels once a month to remove the soap residue and other body oils that affect the absorption rate of the towel.
No Hooks
You should hang the towels in the shower in bars and not on hooks. It’s because the towels that hang on the towel dry slower and leave moist or damp patches on the towel, allowing bacteria and mold to grow.
No Need to Iron Towel
Lastly, you don’t need to iron the towel, as ironing simply crushes the fabric loop, reducing absorption.
Final Thoughts
It’s high time to break our habit of using the bath towel to wipe our faces, whether consciously or unconsciously. Towels are an essential part of our daily routine, offering us good health and hygiene.
Moreover, it’s the first thing that comes in contact with the skin when it’s wet and, of course, vulnerable. Any towel, either bath or face, should have the quality to dry your skin quickly.
The key takeaway of the above article is to emphasize the benefits of separating the bath and face towel. Furthermore, you should always buy a premium-quality towel such as Mizu antibacterial towels to maximize hygiene.
