Ask a dozen denim enthusiasts “How do you wash your jeans?” and you might get a dozen different answers. I know of some purists who go months on end without washing a pair, while others throw theirs in the freezer to freshen them up. The former head of Levi’s once bragged about having never washed his decade-old 501s. But the easiest way to clean your jeans is to wash them in the washing machine and dry them in the dryer (you can do that without ruining them, I promise).
A good rule of thumb is to wash jeans after every ten wears, according to Deborah Young, an assistant professor who teaches about textiles at ASU FIDM, who picked up the tip from a Levi’s label and says it applies just as well to all denim. (Washing jeans too often can weaken the fabric and make them wear out faster.) Beyond the obvious “clean jeans when they’re dirty” approach — say, for a ketchup stain or a muddy hem — a good way to tell yours are ready for the wash is if they’ve gotten a little too loose. “If you want to get them back to a more fitted, stiffer feel, you want to wash them,” says Clotilde Testa of Walk the West Vintage and Proprietors New York.
Turn your jeans inside out before you throw them in the washer
“Indigo is a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad dye,” Young declares. “The indigo doesn’t bond with cotton in the best way, so it starts to wash out.” This can lead to crocking, when the blue dye transfers to everything else during a wash cycle.
It’s inevitable that jeans will lighten with age, but washing your jeans inside out will help them hold onto their color for longer. “You don’t have the abrasion running around the washing machine with the blue side out,” Young explains.
Newer jeans are more likely to bleed, so you can put just-purchased pairs in a load by themselves. And before washing a darker pair of jeans with the rest of her laundry for the first time, self-professed denim-head Alyss Odle of gently.nyc washes them with a light-colored tote to see how much color transfer there is — or isn’t. “If the tote comes out blue, I’m like, All right, I don’t need to wash this with anything else,” Odle tells me.
You should almost always wash your jeans in cold water
Both water and heat can cause shrinkage, and while the combination is needed to thoroughly clean your jeans or restore the fit of a stretched-out pair, “over time, the shrinkage wins and it just gets smaller,” according to Young. So the general guidance is to use cold water when washing denim.
This is especially important for stretch denim because of its fragile elastic fibers (from either elastane, spandex, or Lycra). “You’ll risk shrinking and you’ll shorten the life of the stretch denim because heat damages the elastic,” Odle warns. For more rigid, non-stretch denim that’s made from 100 percent cotton, cold water will still lessen shrinkage and help preserve the work you’ve done to break it in. Odle and Testa recommend reserving hot-water washes for re-shrinking an overstretched pair. “If it’s fully broken in, I just go hot and I don’t think about it at all,” Odle explains. But if you wash an already well-fitting pair in hot water, once the fibers are shrunk, they’ll need breaking in again.
There’s no need for special laundry detergent when washing denim — whatever you use on the rest of your clothes will do.
Yes, it’s okay to put your jeans in the dryer sometimes
You might’ve heard that you should never, ever put jeans in the dryer. The occasional tumble won’t ruin them, though. Make sure the heat setting isn’t too high — the lower, the better, in fact — and be especially cautious with stretch denim, because overdoing it will affect the jeans’ ability to snap back into shape. You should also avoid dryer sheets, which leave a coating that builds up on the fabric over time.
Still, your best bet is air-drying as much as possible, because that’ll help control shrinking and stretching. If you want to be extra careful, you can lay jeans flat to dry instead of hanging them: “It’s almost like when you think about how you would deal with a wool sweater, which gets stretched out,” says Café Forgot co-founder Lucy Weisner.
To speed up the process, Odle goes for a compromise between tumble-drying and air-drying, tossing her jeans in the dryer for about 15 minutes before hanging them up damp.
Spot-cleaning or steaming can do wonders between washes
“Something has to be said for spot-treating,” says Young. You can get away with fewer regular washings, plus it’s more sustainable since there’s less water involved. The right fix depends on the stain, which should determine whether you use a specific stain remover or just water and a drop or two of detergent (which is how I spot-clean my own jeans). A steamer will also refresh the fabric: “Steaming is a great way to just sort of clean it without really cleaning it,” Weisner adds.
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