What the Care Symbols on a Hoodie Actually Mean

Turn a hoodie inside out and there's usually a strip of small grey pictures near the hem: a tub, a triangle, a square, an iron and a circle. Here's what each symbol means, where the system comes from, and how much weight a care label can actually carry.

Who decides what the symbols mean

In Canada, care labels are optional. The Competition Bureau's textile labelling guidance says plainly that care labelling, in words or symbols, "is a voluntary program in Canada." Fibre content and dealer identity are required. Care instructions aren't. The catch is that once a maker does put care information on a garment, it "cannot be false or misleading and must accurately reflect an appropriate method of care for the article."

The symbols themselves come from a few overlapping standards. The Canadian one was CAN/CGSB-86.1-2003, Care Labelling of Textiles. The Competition Bureau page still refers to it, but the Office of Consumer Affairs notes on its Guide to Apparel and Textile Care Symbols that the Canadian General Standards Board withdrew that standard in October 2017. The guide is still published for information.

South of the border, the reference is ASTM D5489, Standard Guide for Care Symbols for Care Instructions on Textile Products. Internationally it's ISO 3758, managed through GINETEX, the international association for textile care labelling, which announced the fourth edition, ISO 3758:2023, in December 2023. The three use the same five basic shapes but differ in details, so a label won't always match the Canadian guide exactly.

The five shapes, in order

ASTM D5489 sets a reading order, and its minimum label is four symbols in sequence: washing, bleaching, drying, ironing. Professional care comes after, if it's there at all.

The tub is washing.
The triangle is bleaching.
The square is drying.
The iron is ironing and pressing.
The circle is professional cleaning, meaning dry cleaning or wet cleaning.

A cross through any of them means don't. A crossed tub means do not wash. A crossed circle means do not dry-clean.

The tub: dots, numbers and bars

Water temperature shows up in one of two ways. Some labels print the number in degrees Celsius inside the tub. Others use dots. The Office of Consumer Affairs guide sets the dots out like this:

One dot: 30°C, cool
Two dots: 40°C, warm
Three dots: 50°C, hot
Four dots: 60°C, very hot
Five dots: 70°C, extremely hot
Six dots: 95°C, near boil

The important word in every one of the guide's descriptions is "not exceeding." The guide says all its temperatures are maximums. Two dots doesn't mean wash at 40°C. It means don't go above it. Washing a two-dot hoodie at 30°C is inside the instruction.

Bars under the tub describe how hard the cycle is. The guide says bars "help show the severity of the treatment," and lists three settings under each temperature: normal, permanent press, and delicate or gentle. No bar is normal. One bar is permanent press. Two bars is delicate. A hand in the tub means wash gently by hand, and the guide gives two versions, not exceeding 40°C and not exceeding 30°C.

For a heavy cotton hoodie, a typical label reads one or two dots, often with one bar. That's a cool or warm wash on a gentler cycle. If shrinkage worries you, the tub is the symbol that matters most, and the reasons are set out in our post on whether you can unshrink a cotton hoodie.

The triangle: bleach

The guide lists three bleach instructions. An empty triangle means any bleach when needed. A triangle with diagonal lines inside means non-chlorine bleach only. A crossed-out triangle means do not bleach. On dyed cotton, non-chlorine only or no bleach is common, because chlorine bleach can strip dye. If it's already happened, there's a separate walkthrough on fixing a bleach spot on a black hoodie.

The square: drying

A circle inside the square means tumble dry. Dots inside the circle give the heat, more dots meaning hotter. The Canadian guide puts numbers on the settings: high heat not exceeding 75°C, medium not exceeding 65°C, low not exceeding 55°C. There's also a no-heat setting, and a crossed version means do not tumble dry.

No circle, just lines inside the square, means natural drying. The guide covers line dry or hang to dry, drip dry, which means hanging it up soaking wet, and dry flat on a suitable surface. A single horizontal line is dry flat. Two short diagonal lines in the top corner add "dry in the shade" to whichever drying method sits beside them.

Dry flat on a heavy hoodie is worth taking seriously. A wet hoodie in heavy fleece holds a lot of water, and hanging it lets that weight pull the body and sleeves longer. Flat drying needs air moving underneath, not a hot surface, which is why we'd steer you away from drying a hoodie on a baseboard heater once the heating comes on.

The iron: three temperatures

Dots in the iron set the maximum soleplate temperature. The guide gives them as follows, with the fibres each one suits:

One dot, not exceeding 110°C: acetate, acrylic, modacrylic, nylon, polypropylene and spandex
Two dots, not exceeding 150°C: polyester, rayon, silk, triacetate and wool
Three dots, not exceeding 200°C: cotton and linen

A cotton hoodie can take three dots, but a print or a rib with spandex in it often can't, which is why many cotton garments are labelled lower than the cloth alone would need. The guide also has a separate "do not steam" symbol.

The circle: professional cleaning

The circle is for dry cleaners. A letter inside tells them which solvent to use. The guide lists dry-clean on a normal cycle with any solvent except trichloroethylene, which is the P, and dry-clean with petroleum solvent only, which is the F. ISO labels can also carry a W for professional wet cleaning.

What a care label can and can't tell you

This is where the folklore starts. A care label is the maker's statement of one safe way to clean the garment. It isn't a list of everything that will harm it, and it isn't proof that anything was tested.

The clearest rules on this are American, but they matter here because so many garments sold in Canada are labelled for both markets. The US Federal Trade Commission's guide, Clothes Captioning: Complying with the Care Labeling Rule, says makers need "reliable evidence to support the care instructions," which can be industry expertise, test results or tests on components. It also says a label only has to give one safe method. If a garment is washable, the label can give washing instructions or dry-cleaning instructions, not necessarily both. Warnings are only required for procedures a consumer would reasonably assume were fine.

Canada's rule is shorter: the instruction can't be false or misleading. Neither country requires a maker to publish the tests behind a label. So a "do not tumble dry" symbol tells you the maker isn't standing behind the dryer. It doesn't tell you how much the hoodie would shrink if you used one, and no symbol standard claims to. The ASTM, ISO and Canadian documents define what the pictures mean. They don't set how much shrinkage or fading a garment is allowed before its label counts as wrong.

Two practical points follow from that. First, going gentler than the label is almost always fine. Colder water, a lower dryer setting and drying flat all sit inside the instruction. Second, going harsher is a bet you're making yourself. The label won't tell you the odds.

Reading the label on a heavy hoodie

Put together, a typical label on a heavy cotton hoodie says something like this: tub with one or two dots, triangle crossed or with lines, square with a low-heat dot or no circle at all, iron with two or three dots, circle crossed. In plain words, wash cool or warm on a gentle cycle, no chlorine, low heat or air dry, a warm iron if you need it, no dry cleaning.

Our own washing and drying instructions are on the care page, and they're written in words as well as symbols for exactly this reason.

Sources

Office of Consumer Affairs, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Guide to Apparel and Textile Care Symbols. Page modified 2024. ised-isde.canada.ca
Competition Bureau Canada. Textile labelling requirements. Page modified 2022. competition-bureau.canada.ca
ASTM International. ASTM D5489-18(2023), Standard Guide for Care Symbols for Care Instructions on Textile Products. Reapproved 2023. store.astm.org
GINETEX, the International Association for Textile Care Labelling. Care symbols and the publication of ISO 3758:2023. 2023. ginetex.net
US Federal Trade Commission. Clothes Captioning: Complying with the Care Labeling Rule. 2014. ftc.gov