So, you’ve forked out lots of your hard earned cash on some super lovely cycling clothing and you’re going to look so good in it. Even if you’re only standing next to your bike and not actually cycling!
You go off, enjoy nice spins. Come home and bung it in the washing machine. Time after time after time. Soon it starts to get saggy and snag on other clothing items in the wash (bra hooks are awful for catching and snagging clothes!! Clip them together before you put them in your machine) and before you know it, your lovely jersey is relegated to the back of your cycling wardrobe, never to be looked at again.
Fear not! With these tips, you can keep your lovely cycling clothing looking tip top for many years (but do feel free to be a regular customer with us!!)
Cycling clothing is not made from regular fabrics that you’d have in your day to day non-bike life like cotton or denim.
Cycling clothes are made from technical fabrics and they do require some special looking after.
For example, our cycling jerseys are made from polyester so they are best washed at 30 degrees or less and air dried (we like to zip them up and turn them inside out before we wash them) - our care label symbols are on the jersey collars and say don’t bleach, don’t iron and don’t dry clean!
In an ideal world, we would hand wash all our cycling clothes in some special sports clothes detergent (we do use Halo Proactive from time to time). Hand washing is less stressful on fabrics which will help them last longer. But in reality, who really has that much time on their hands to hand wash clothes? If you do, you need to be out on your bike more…..
Whilst we will all wash our jerseys, shorts, socks, sports bras after each wear - some cycling clothing should only be washed now and then. Outer layers like our windproof coat and gilet, or the heavier autumn/winter Carrick coat shouldn’t be washed too often. These types of items usually have a water-repellent treatment on the outside layer (kind of like ski clothing) and washing them repeatedly will damage this and reduce their effectiveness. If you do need to wash them, try a detergent like Mountain Warehouse or Nikwax Tech Wash.
Top Tip: Never use normal laundry detergent on your waterproof cycling clothing.
These detergents are designed to break down grease and road crud, and the coating on your clothing looks a lot like grease to the detergent, therefore it will try and break it down.
Have you any tips you'd like to share? Feel free to drop us a message to let us know.
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