Laundry symbols make no sense(uxdesign.cc) |
Laundry symbols make no sense(uxdesign.cc) |
One must remember that these are international symbols and the cultural context you bring to interpretation is different from another’s.
Also as other commenters have said it will do a much worse job when the fabric is faded or somebody without a 20/20 vision.
I think somebody else needs to take a shot at this again.
And besides that: do we really need new icons? Make an app which will recognize and interpret the icons and you are done without making several gigantic industries replace well-known and well-working pieces of their daily work.
So many comments even straight out dismissing the necessity of the labels altogether, which 1. is not the point at all and 2. would definitely not be the sentiment from those who are actually in charge of the laundry and care about taking care their clothes well over the years.
Maybe HN doesn’t necessarily have the intended audience for this kind of post then.
I liken these attempts at symbol sets, to ancient hieroglyphics - a different picture-writing for everything. Even the Egyptians gave up and turned to phonetic spelling.
Just write the instructions on the tag. Or heck, put a 2D scan code there and my phone will tell me what to do.
But then you need different labels for different markets, and even then often lots of different languages on the same label. That's the whole point of using symbols instead: they are universal.
At least in theory. In the real world labels do contain instructions in multiple languages, and I do read those instead of trying to decipher the symbols.
Also, while I can feel with my hand whether water is "cold," "warm," or "hot." I honestly have no idea what the actual temperature of the water in my washer is in degrees Celsius.
Furthermore, I live in the US (which is not where any of my clothes are made), so there's the added step of trying to convert the degrees from Celsius to Fahrenheit.
The explicit temperatures are for machine washing, don't you just... set the washing temperature to whatever you want?
If you're washing by hand, it's unlikely that you're washing above 40C, and that's if you like hurting yourself: at 50C (120F) serious burns take about 10mn, at 60C (140F) it's around 3 seconds.
I think this is typical for US washing machines?
Do (eg) European washing machines instead typically have you set wash temp to an arbitrary number of °C?
The worst offender being the representation of a front loading washing machine, while most of the developing world uses top loading washing machines. In my country all those "washing machine" icons would be incorrectly read as tumble dryer icons because here washers are top loaded and dryers are front loaded.
How is embedding a representation of what a washing machine looks like now makes them more universal or recognisable?
Despite the couple of paragraphs pontificating about what good icons should be, most of them are much worse than the cleaner, simpler, older ones. The drying ones are more descriptive, but less legible.
The originals are too abstract. Unless you memorise them you basically have to look them up every time. Which is probably why most clothes also have English text telling you what to do on the label.
The new ones obviously have too small details to print on a typical label but I think that could be fixed fairly easily.
Arabic numerals make no sense. Kanji makes no sense. The Roman alphabet makes no sense. Of course, they're symbols. You memorize them. They stand for the object they're pointing at. They're not abstractions meant to represent directly the thing its self.
Everyone, stop being so literal. Sheesh.
There's some decent ideas here though. The shape of the bleach bottle, the circular motion of the arrows indicating tumble, a thermometer, and a dry cleaning bag. Unfortunately, the execution isn't as good as it should be. The strokes are too thick, and detailing is too crowded.
If anything, this is a decent first draft. But I would send it back with notes. The most important one being: less is more. And it's okay to leave existing icons alone that already work. Perhaps redesign within the constraints of the existing style, rather than creating a new style?
If you really want people to understand, it should probably be just arabic numerals. They're almost universally understand, and then you can just look it up in your language or print out the chart and put it next to the machine.
Its not a hard task building a washing machine or tumble dryer that matches the washing symbols, but it seems to be for the current industry leaders!
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
I don't seem to have problems doing laundry despite not understanding the care label.
Another failed GUI designer. If it worked for so many years, a lot of people are familiar with them. Why repeat the Windows GUI experience ? I get that the first phones were slow and doing things in Java didn't help and recognizing that the GUI is crap would not help with market adoption, but let's not pretend that Material design or reinventing a GUI every two years is innovative.
The thesis is that they don't work, at all. I have to look them up every time because they are absolutely inscrutable today. Laundry symbols are rarely looked at for most folks, so they have to be maximally communicative. It's not good enough if the only people that know what they mean are those that deal with them constantly.
In most cases it's pretty obvious how a fabric should be washed just based on the feel of the material. In cases where it isn't, I've got the chart up in the one place I do laundry. Most launder mats I've been to have the same chart on the wall somewhere.
I'm not sure why memorizing is so bad in this case.
Additionally, laundry & ironing professionals have those symbols more than memorized ;)
Dyes, machines and laundry detergent all changed for the better. I haven't inadvertently made things pink in 20 years now. The red now holds. Even new jeans come prewashed. My machine seems to be much gentler too.
According to Statista, 80% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. Just add a link to the instructions and have translations in plain language that are standardized; that is manufactures/brands just reuse the standard types of instructions that are relevant.
they make more sense than most mobile UIs, and there's usually text with them anyway.
A clear number for temperature on its own, followed by a separate symbol for a machine or a hand would be clearer than piling one onto another.
Then again, maybe we have another "floppy disk" situation where the concept survives the artifact.
ignoring the existing multiplicity of existing standards (ISO vs. ASTM vs. GINETEX vs. Japan vs. OTEXA/CGSB/Canada) to propose another one, especially when many of the changes he makes were at one point implemented in a non-English-speaking nation for decades[1] and then abandoned for the international standard that he doesn't like
redesigning all future clothing to use a new standard that can be confused or conflict with existing standards that will remain in use for decades because no older non-compliant clothing will be immediately destroyed, much less all
missing more actionable user-focused solutions that don't require a new standard, such as adding standardized, well-designed, localized symbol keys on points of interaction, like laundry supplies and equipment
all leading to a point not of action but to "bring more awareness to the cost" of something the author and his immediate audience personally does not understand, but which is not necessarily broadly misunderstood
and for that matter is only believed by the author to be broadly misunderstood because of an out-of-context, entertaining blog post[2] where, for mildly career-connected fun and LinkedIn social engagement, the researcher texted her mom and some personal friends and came to a half-joking conclusion appropriate to the post's mostly unserious tone ("I am predictably going to advocate more user research on the matter") that's neither mentioned nor applied by the author
[1] https://www.sbs-zipper.com/blog/japan-implements-new-clothin...
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/speed-user-research-question-...
2. Add said scheme to iOS and Android
3. Scan the QR code
4. iOS or Android show the washing instructions in text/icons/images, of course localized
i agree with this part of your premise (and also that a thermometer would be hard to read on a tiny tag)
The 70/60 degree temp icons both say 70 in the text below. :D
Let's simply make all clothes compatible with a regular wash and tumble dry process.
If the clothes use a dye that isn't waterproof, use a different dye. If the fabric is too fragile to withstand spinning, use a stronger fabric. If a material can't withstand the heat of a dryer, use better material.
Material science has come so far in the past 100 years that we can meet or exceed the performance of pretty much any of last centuries materials while also being able to make the stuff washable.
Computers make no sense! So let's simplify them. Let's just have one kind of laptop, desktop, server, and phone. With the same operating system.
Why are we still using so many different kinds of computers?
Because the symbols need to be looked up we shouldn't use silk any more??
What the hell? That’s barbaric.
> Do (eg) European washing machines instead typically have you set wash temp to an arbitrary number of °C?
Not arbitrary except possibly on high-end machines but even entry-level stuff have temp settings for the usual stuff: cold (whatever’s out the tap), 30, 40, 60, 90.
Personally, I leave my machine set to hot for everything. Hot water is what I use for washing in my dish washer, in my sink, in my shower.. hot water is for washing. That's how I see it.
If you have enough laundry I expect you try to put stuff with similar requirements together in the same way you segregate whites and colors.
Though usually unless your laundry is quite dirty you'd go with 30 standard and shove everything in there, at 30 color shouldn't even be too much of a factor.
In all honesty I'm not quite sure why both are present, I think it's because older generations believed 30 would not be enough (as it's "human range" water), so 30 or cold would only be for the clothes which can't go any higher and 40 was the baseline.
Apparently USAians are washing machine philistines who don't need more than three temperatures and don't know what they are?
Anyway, this shows another challenge in these icons, the international diversity of washing techniques and technology.
(Edit: I found one possible answer online -- Euro washing machines may actually have water heaters built in, while American washing macchines may just use the existing house "hot water supply". So Euro machines can heat to desired temp, while American ones just have to take what they get! Why THAT was done that way, I don't know, difference in hot water heating technology choices? Euro houses don't usually have a central "hot water tank" like US has? Why THAT is would be yet another question...).
Ah so it’s the same deal as the dishwashers, I should have figured.
> Euro houses don't usually have a central "hot water tank" like US has? Why THAT is would be yet another question...).
Commonly not, although it does absolutely exist water is frequently heated up on-demand.
However a better reason might be the same as the kettle thing: the US being on 120V, so getting hot water out the furnace or hot water tank is waaay faster than heating it up on the spot.
The reality is we are overthinking it - "cold/warm/hot" is about all we need, and "warm" is really just "fill as fast as possible" often, since it opens both hoses.
I think you could be right about washing machines/dishwashers, but as far as electric kettles... even at US 120V, an electric kettle is WAY faster at heating water to boiling than even my fairly powerful (bigger than traditional burner) gas range. (Not to mention much more energy-efficient).
I have no idea why electric kettles aren't more popular in the US.
But I never thought about the 110V/230V thing with regard to kettles. I guess even though electric kettles in the US are faster than the stovetop, they still aren't as fast as everywhere else with 230V? Maybe "faster but not faster enough" is why people still heat water on a stovetop here? I don't know!
His main conclusion: Americans have less use for kettles since they don't drink tea (as much).
He also observes that electric kettles turn out to be faster and more efficient than other means of heating water for other purposes that are not obvious at first sight, as you also mention.
Not all European electric kettles are faster than American ones BTW. Mine is 1200 W (I think) which is in the range of what American ones can deliver. There are more powerful models available too of course.
I do not think it's because of 110V though! Even a 110V electric kettle is far faster than stovetop.
Driers, and similar high power appliances, don't use a single 120V phase. They use two phrases, 180 degrees apart in normal residential houses and 120 degrees apart in apartment buildings. Any American clothing dryer I've ever seen has 240V (slightly less in apartment buildings.)
If I wanted to bother I could run the "raw" hot water to the washer to get 140° IIRC.
It's usually for really sturdy whites you want to disinfect after they've been soiled for instance. Use of that program has definitely gone way down over time. The energy requirements alone make it not a routine wash thing.
It's also used to basically deep clean the washing machine itself.
https://unimac.com/products/washer-extractors/high-performan...
I have no idea even looking on my screen here what the difference between the first three is supposed to be, and the numerals in the three thereafter are only legible because I'm staring at a bright screen, not swearing into the void in my laundry room, trying to find a better light.
All that aside, I feel I'd still have to look their new interpretations up. International visual vernacular .. doesn't really exist.
Laundry is literally filled with things to know, outside of these symbols. Household tasks are.
I don't see labels on bleech bottles, saying not to mix it with vinegar or you could die. Yet people have done that in the wash, so why not start there?
Here's what each sane person should do, who actually takes time to look at tags. (after all if you couldn't care less, and never look at tags, what's the point?)
Print a copy of the extended tag list out, and hang it in the laundry room at home. I have a cabinet where I keep extra detergent, etc, so I taped it up on the inside of the door.
Problem sovled.
For a laundrymat, for your smartphone, download a properly formatted, for easy phone viewing version.
Done.
Non-problem, compared to expecting the entire planet to change. We don't need another standard!!
All that would happen is I'd have two standards to look at.
- The Inmate Are Running The Asylum by Alan Cooper
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
(and I'm sure there are many more good resources that are recent than that.)
It's very easy as tech-savvy people like us to underestimate how hard technology, even conventions like laundry symbols, are. I personally have printed out a legend explaining the laundry symbols and put them near to my washing machine, but I'm the only person I know who does that. Everyone else guesses or struggles to use laundry symbols correctly, or reads the text in English if it is provided.
Now, does that mean we should change all the laundry symbols just because one person shared a redesign on their blog? No. Changing something that is so well-established has significant downsides and risks. But I think it's perfectly legitimate to spot their difficulties, and to pursue better UX relentlessly, with testing with real users. That's what separates a good (UX) designer from an engineer who produces something that fits their mindset but not the mindset of actual users.
Color-safe detergents have been the norm since my very early adulthood. I remember ads for it when I was a kid but by the time I was buying detergent, most detergent was color safe. I've never even bothered to sort by color, aside from keeping raw denim away from everything else (on the rare occasions it's washed at all).
What am I missing out on? My family's clothes seem to last just fine. My wife pays even less attention to this stuff than I do, and everything seems OK.
I tend to agree. As a culture we have the knowledge of the world in our pocket day in and day out yet we have become lazy and even obstinate about using it.
I've started turning gardening and landscaping into a bit of a hobby with my new house. I'm constantly looking up specifics on plants, how to prune, and etc. It is so much easier than when I last had a house. The workflow no longer requires amassed knowledge, books, or keeping every tag that came with every plant.
It's now:
Take a photo of plant Use app to identify Get all the info you need
I remember this in spite of not having done laundry in 5 years. And you're exactly right. New symbols mean little to me, I would still need to look them up and then there would be twice as many bad symbols.
This redesign article is an example of why you should avoid UI/UX people who can only design. They'll change your branding everytime they get bored and create more headache than they solve.
edit: Just to be clear, though, I agree with you - people should educate themselves and the fact that people won't make a point of educating themselves is the problem. I've had multiple experiences where I paused to look up if it was safe to mix medications that were being given to my kids, or if it was safe to use a human first aid ointment on a pet. Sometimes the answer is 'No!' but the general reaction is usually "Oh I wouldn't worry about it".
Have you looked? Mine says “STRONG OXIDIZING AGENT: Mix only with water. Mixing this product with chemicals […] may release hazardous gases”
You sure about that?
The problem is ultimately that the symbols are so abstract that nobody remembers them.
Also, I missed a link to a legend for the original design, for which the author’s animated version does not compensate.
There isnt much point in making a competing standard as we already know what happens (more confusion, more fractured knowledge, etc.)
Instead, just print a laundry chart and leave it with the washer.
As for whitegoods manufacturers: they could, as a minimum, describe their various wash and dry settings using the appropriate symbols rather than marketing terms.
The water temp in the old one is expressed much more clearly than the new one.
The most significant improvement is the bleach/no bleach symbol. The rest either don't improve much or actually make things less legible.
Also, sidenote the "drying" symbol looks a bit like the hotsprings/onsen symbol --the official symbol is a little diff as it has an oval, but on roadsigns they drop the oval sometimes so it looks very similar (see U+2668)
The iconography is updated which is nice but the line weights are too thick.
Way too thick, overlapping and thats why probably impossible to print on most textile labal printers. I also find most of the labels looking the same - similar to when Google redesigned their icons and not everyone liked it.
https://9to5google.com/2020/10/06/gmail-logo-workspace-redes...
The flask for bleach, and the drying symbols are much clearer though.
The detail in some is a bit too high for some clothing tags, I'd agree on that.
Indeed, especially given the current nonsense is commonly unreadable already after just a wash or two (if not before you've washed the garment).
Over the last 15 years or so I think we've taken a few giant steps backwards as we let freewheeling artists take over. Yet go back to the early 80s and look at the original Macintosh UI which was designed by an artist - Susan Kare - with complete elegance and simplicity. What has happened? Just because computers have increased in speed doesn't mean the complexity of the artwork must increase proportionally - often at the expense of usability.
I propose a Moore's law of a label printing density doubling every 18 months (years?).
Edit: Another advantage of high legibility is speed. Even if I have a tag where the new symbols are legible, I won't be interpreting them as quickly as the original symbols, under the precondition that I am already familiar with each set of symbols.
Edit: I think the reason this provoked me is that I have run into cases where this attitude toward design created bad real world experiences, so I immediately want to warn away from it as soon as I see it even in a hypothetical case.
1) Irons have respective dots on them. I can look at the clothes, look at the iron, and turn the temperature dial to the matching setting. I'm not playing guessing games of "where on the dial is 1/3rd?", there's a literal dot that matches the symbol.
2) The temperature symbols now go from easy to distinguish to confusing, especially when smaller and lighting not so great. Is it a 1/3 of the way through? 2/3rs? Counting dots is way, way easier and quicker.
You can reverse this too. If I never understand what they mean, it doesn’t matter that I can still read them.
I mean, I agree there’s too many hard to read details, but the originals are absolutely impenetrable.
It's similar for the iron. Maybe dots as temperature isn't obvious, but it's about as clear as the thermometer, is easy to read, and matches the icons on the iron itself.
Eg, in some cases the redesign uses the 'dots' motif for strength of effect, and yet in others it uses a 'thermometer'. Just inconsistent, and actually even less intuitive.
Weird fact: Despite having been around for decades, laundry symbols have not been assigned Unicode code points. This mailing list email from Ken Whistler in 2003[1] suggests the existence of a conflicting Canadian standard as a reason, along with a philosophy of not including "icons" (especially color-coded ones!) in a "character" set, given that pictographic language is likely to change over the next century.
(Unicode threw that out the window in 2010 when they standardized emojis, and given how complex emojis have become Ken's argument is sounding better and better...)
[1] http://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2003-m06/0274.html
Generally, we just ignore the labels and put all the clothes in a colour separated wash on the 30c daily eco cycle. If the clothes get damaged - which is rare in a modern non-agitator washing machine - we just don't buy that type of fabric/garment any more. It does reduce the clothing options a little bit, for example, no silk, but it's worth the improved quality of life. Laundry Darwinism.
There are a few types of necessary item we do get dry cleaned, such as expensive suits and ball gowns, but at least for us those are rare use.
The other thing that has improved our life a lot is only buying non-iron clothing.
The physical world is complex.
Interestingly most detergent works great at 30c. Hotter wash temps are for a time before biological enzymes were used as detergent additives.
And lest one think I'm a dainty flower that doesn't get clothes all that dirty, just last week I was running a trail race, and as I do, caught my foot on a root and went diving downhill straight into a big pile of Pacific Northwest mud. I wasn't sure the mud was going to wash out of my skin, let alone the knee socks and running outfit. One trip through the front loader on cold, and it's like it never happened.
I’m not sure that they even meets the authors own objectives — there are more small details that are harder to resolve at small sizes and likely would be harder to print clearly. They also aren’t any more “googleable” than the originals.
Lastly, they also assume that users are familiar with front loading washing machines, which may not be common in some places. It could easily be interpreted as a tumble dryer.
All that said, I've been ignoring the labels for years, and never had a problem.
no triangles
adidas
square
one squared
new document minus
equality
pig snout
squaring the circle
an eye looking through a square hole
square minus
do not square the circle
iron
iron.
iron..
iron...
iron deficiency
n/a
please fill in the entire circle or your answer will not be countedAlso, why not putting the old and new icons side by side? For an UX designer that is policing on others, the animated GIF that you can't control with a fast transition was a very poor choice.
Frankly I think symbols that give you no impression at all are better than symbols that give you the wrong impression.
Curious about those middle temperature settings. It seems like a lot of levels: 70C, 60C, 50C, 40C. What fabric would be fine at 40C, but 50C would be "too hot"?
I mean, I understand that some synthetics or wool would have a problem with extreme heat like 95C, and some might need to be at room temp for color to stay. But beyond that, isn't one "middle level" enough?
" stroke width was increased so the overall shapes can still be read when details are lost to the viewing distance or blurred visions"
Increasing the stroke width isn't going to overcome this and the symbols have to be durable enough to still be read after the tag is worn and faded.
And if you're going to have the symbols and printed text, you might as well omit the symbols entirely. I think both sets of symbols are worthless. I could probably guess what some of them mean if my life depended on it, but I'm not going to. Deciphering symbols is a waste of my time. At least if printed Spanish were used, puzzling out the meaning would actually enrich my life. The symbols are worthless noise and I don't want their meaning wasting space in my brain.
Welding symbols:
I wonder why they felt it necessary to keep everything as a single icon? Wouldn’t be as impossible to print/stitch or read if the icons were larger nouns + modifiers.
To remember that the circle is dry cleaning it helps to know that it can circumscribe letters indicating what type of dry cleaning process is allowed.
The tumble dry symbol just looks like a tumble dryer, and the washing symbol the same. Bleach is the tricky one but can be remembered because it's not one of the others.
I will go and make one sheet for me now.
In fact, this is the stuff that should be part of a high-school curriculum!
This post reminds me of when a junior dev refactors a bit of code that they now find to be well-crafted and intelligible simply because it came from their own mind. However, the result is often just as esoteric and convoluted, or it's even worse!
E.g., does this symbol mean do not pack the cleaned cloth in a nylon envelope, or does it mean no dry cleaning? Is this an artificial heat source, or "natural dry"? Or is it the smelly process (bleaching)? Is this a closed chemical or recycling process, or tumbling? Also, the dot system is probably easier to identify and discern and more resistant to wear than the depiction of thermometers (which probably only work relative to each other, having something to compare with).
Moreover, icons like these are not app icons on the home screen: they do not work best, if they (or their constituting elements) are all of even weight. Eye-sight, lighting conditions and ease of identification are primary aspects of this. Something like this should probably work by a primary context identifier, conveyed by the shape, and a secondary qualifier ("specificator") inside that shape with convenient separating whitespace around it.
In fact, now that I've seen the meaning of each one of them I think I might start to recognise them better :)
Most of the time I have just used the standard wash setting, then air dry if sunny or machine dry if raining.
I’m not even sure how temperature influences washing. I’ll have to read about that.
It’s really not. It looks like an Erlenmeyer flask, which could contain anything (“use detergent”? “Use additives”? There are lots of things that come up in bottles in my laundry room).
I found the ones about drying to be better, probably because the original ones were way too abstract.
> If I don't know what a line under the washing machine means, how am I supposed to know what the 2nd button means.
Exactly! I don’t know what pushing the 2nd button on my washing machine does, either. Hell, my washing machine does not have anything that looks like the buttons of the symbols. And good luck trying to guess which one of the three buttons is filled after 5 washes, when the presence of one or two lines will still be clear.
Or does that just happen on European irons?
At least that's how I see it, it could also just have been the last obvious symbol remaining after square/triangle were taken.
Which is exactly in line with 'good' ui design in software. So goal achieved, I guess.
Take a look on those symbols: "A", "B", "C". A triangle with the basis moved up, two circles with a straight side, and an open circumference arc. They were abstract into complete meaningless, yet they are great for their use-case.
Neither of my laundry machines have any symbols on their control panels, only printed English. The only symbols I can find on them are the Explosion, Fire, and Shock warning stickers inside the rim of the doors.
Do you know how to do your laundry despite not knowing how to read the symbols?
All I'm saying is that maybe, with the full power of graphic design, we could have something a little more self-explanatory than triangle = bleach, circle = dry clean. The iron symbol is perfectly clear, for instance.
(Chlorine) bleach mixed with ammonia (which is a base) or any acid, including vinegar, will release the chemical weapon chlorine gas.
I myself recognize that I've seen a few of them, but since they are as cryptic as Egyptian hieroglyphs to me, I ignore them.
I only know the one for temperature, the "no dryer" one, "wash by hand" and "no spin-dry". But like you, I don't give a shit. I wash everything at 60 (underwear, bed sheets, towels) or 40 (everything else) °C with spin-dry at 1400rpm.[*] Some pieces might wear faster, but so be it. I guess the vast majority of people does it that way.
[*] Ok ok, except wool or cashmere, or a suit. But this is something I just learned from my mom at young age, not by researching any symbols.
What do you think the problem (one of them) with the Information Age is? The affordance of lookup makes it so that we have to look up more and more. And then we have to arrange more and more information in order to make the frequently-needed information convenient enough to look up.
Part of my generation and most of the previous generations IMO have never fully embraced a connected world. Just watching how much quarantine crushed some people and how some of us doubled down on online lives that were already fulfilling (discord, watch parties and online interaction). I've always felt judged by my older friends / folks my age about how I live my life. (I met my wife in an MMO a decade ago and we moved across the country to be together.)
When forced to go online, the generation that rejected online have an allergic reaction. I can't even count the number of times I have been texted or called for something personally or professionally that could be found in a 5 minute search by people who reject the idea of even searching first.
Long story short, I think it will literally die out.
I think you (and others) are focusing on the wrong thing here. Are you likely to bleach your black t-shirts? Are you likely to dry clean them?
No, certainly not, these are special, rather uncommon processes that are unlikely to be part of one's daily washing routing, and therefore it doesn't really matter if they're not immediately obvious.
The washing and ironing temperature, as well as the hand wash symbol, are the ones that actually matter and they're also quite obvious. The tumble dry symbols are maybe less obvious and common enough today, they probably seemed like they were one of the less common processes back in the 70's in France (where tumble driers are only just beginning to be common today). I'm pretty sure you should ignore the "no tumble dry" symbols most of the time anyway if your tumble drier is more recent than the 70's. That's what I do.
So if you just ignore the symbols you don't understand, in most cases and for most people, everything will be fine and you will simply know what maximum temperature to wash your clothes.
I'd be curious what the users of the labels think. If they exist.
Just to highlight how non-universal these symbol are, I have never had an iron that has three levels of heat or that represents the levels with dots.
Funny thing, those two do not match. For example, on my current iron "Cotton" is marked at three-dots, whereas all my cotton clothes have labels that insist on ironing them on two-dots.
That's the square with no circle, the circle with no square is very different.
Maybe you gotta look them up on your own, but after a while, you learn the ones you need to.
30% to 50% regardless of who was what type in the past set. It's like if you changed the floppy disk icon in MS Word to a text box that read "SAVE".
Or were you saying that the bleach bottles on your shelf state that one should not mix bleach with acids such as vinegar? I’d actually have to go look at mine, but I don’t recall a mention.
So I looked: the warning is in the middle of a wall of text, with print so small only pedantic geeks with good, young eyes are going to bother. Let alone be able to read it, anyone over 40 will need a magnifier.
It probably doesn't specify vinegar, but a general "do not mix with other cleaners". If it only said vinegar, then someone would mix it with ammonia and when they died, they'd claim "it only said vinegar!"
Without going back and straining my eyes, I don't think it even goes that far. Just do not mix with acids, and it specifically called out "urine and feces", from which I guess we're supposed to surmise that it is not a toilet cleaner? It's a difficult problem, yes, because "but it didn't say not to..."
But again, I'm pretty sure the solution does not lie in a wall of 6 pt. text., regardless of what it needs to say.
(I do think the circle is difficult, but that's probably because I don't typically wear clothes that one would think about dry cleaning)
- Dry clean formal clothes
- Air dry wool
- If I'm going through a raw denim phase, keep it out of the regular laundry
- Everything else goes in the washer set on permanent press and then in the dryer at medium heat
Never in 17 years of doing my own laundry has this system failed me in any way.
And yes, I do pay attention (to the special cases). T-shirt? It's a t-shirt.
Winter coat? Fancy suit? See what it says. Or send it to be professionally cleaned.
Where it usually fails (with everyday stuff) is that people DNGAF and dry their clothes at 90C then come to heavily shrunk garments. Or with faded colors.
https://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/household-hi...
Wash on cold and hang dry is best if possible.