Can You Wash Towels With Clothes?

Quick answer

Yes, when the towels and clothes share compatible care labels, colors, soil levels, wash temperature, and cycle needs. Separate new or lint-shedding towels, delicate or lint-attracting garments, strongly colored items, and heavily soiled loads.

Sort by what the wash must accomplish

The American Cleaning Institute recommends grouping items by color, fabric type, soil, and washing instructions. A sturdy cotton T-shirt and established colorfast towels may fit the same normal cycle. A delicate knit, a dark new towel, or a heavily soiled cleaning cloth creates a mismatch.

Towels are bulky and can release lint. New towels in particular may deposit lint on synthetics, corduroy, and napped fabrics that attract it. A drum packed with absorbent items also becomes heavy and may leave too little room for effective movement and rinsing.

Four questions decide most mixed loads

A useful decision is not “towels or clothes?” but whether the items agree on four requirements:

Care: can every item tolerate the same cycle and temperature?
Color: is dye transfer unlikely for this particular load?
Soil and lint: are the items similarly soiled, and are lint shedders kept away from lint collectors?
Load behavior: will the wet towels still leave enough room for movement and rinsing?

Common mixed-load examples
Scenario	Usually reasonable	Better separated
Everyday cotton clothing + established colorfast towels	If care labels and colors align	If the drum becomes crowded
New dark towels + light clothing	Rarely the best first choice	Dye and lint risk are both higher
Towels + delicate knit or lint-attracting fabric	Only if labels and fabric behavior truly match	Usually simpler and safer
Bath towels + heavily soiled cleaning cloths	Not a useful match	Separate by soil level and intended wash

A quick pre-load check

Read every care label and use the gentlest compatible requirement.
Separate whites, lights, and darks when dye transfer is plausible.
Keep heavily soiled items away from lightly worn clothing.
Isolate lint shedders from lint collectors.
Leave enough capacity for the machine and cycle described in its manual.

Washing together does not mean drying together

Drying can require a second sort. Towels often take longer than lightweight clothing, while some garments need low heat or air drying. Removing finished items earlier prevents the towel's drying time from dictating excessive heat for everything else.

The practical rule

“Can be washed together” does not mean “must be.” If one item forces the rest of the load into the wrong temperature, cycle, lint environment, or drying method, a separate load is the cleaner decision.

A worked example: Sunday laundry for one household

Suppose a household has a week of cotton T-shirts, two established gray bath towels that have been washed many times, a hand towel, and one black merino sweater. The T-shirts and the gray towels agree on all four questions: both are sturdy cotton, both tolerate the same cycle, dye transfer is unlikely, and neither is unusually soiled. They can share a load if the drum still has room. The sweater fails the care question, because wool knits usually call for a gentler cycle than towels do, so it goes into its own load or a gentle cycle.

Now change one detail: the gray towels are brand new. New towels often shed more lint and may release some dye in early washes. In that case the T-shirts and the towels no longer agree on color and lint, and washing the towels alone for their first few cycles avoids spreading lint across the clothing. The example shows why the four questions work better than a fixed rule: the same items can be a good match or a poor match depending on one changed variable.

Mistakes that make a mixed load go wrong

The most common mistake is judging the load by dry weight and ignoring volume. Wet towels absorb a great deal of water and press against each other, so a drum that looks half full when dry can behave like a full one once the cycle starts. Clothes trapped inside a tight towel mass receive less agitation and rinsing, which can leave detergent residue or a lingering smell.

A second mistake is following the towel label for the whole load without reading the clothing labels. If one garment requires a cooler wash than the towels, the cooler requirement controls the whole load, and the towels may then be washed less effectively than they would be alone. When that trade-off is not acceptable, two smaller loads are the better answer.

A third mistake is skipping the lint check on dark clothing. Lint is far more visible on black, navy, and corduroy than on a white towel, so a load that looks fine at a glance can leave a pale film on dark pieces. Turning dark garments inside out is a low-effort way to limit that.

Questions readers ask about mixed loads

Does the order of washing matter? Not for the chemistry of the wash, but washing lint-shedding items last means the drum is less likely to carry loose lint into the next load of lint-sensitive clothing. Wiping the drum and door seal between very different loads helps.

Is it fine to wash gym clothes with bath towels? Often yes if both are cotton-rich and the temperature suits both, but performance synthetics can attract lint and may hold odor, so many people prefer to wash them separately. Follow the garment label before deciding.