Face Cloths

They beautify and furnish the bathroom as much as couches and coffee tables. One often-overlooked piece of linen is the small, square cloth designed to be used to wash and dry the face. A face washcloth or face towel is an underused but important facet of hygiene.

People tend to be vigilant about using cleansers and face soaps. They make sure to coat their faces in sunscreen when necessary. However, more often than not, the face is scrubbed by hand and dried with whatever towel is available.

Unfortunately, the face is recoated in bacteria this way. There’s also a risk of the dirt getting embedded into the pores that have been opened due to the warm water. Having a ready stack of face towels available ensures that the face is dried with a clean towel.

This allows the pores to naturally close after the face has been cleaned, leading to cleaner, glowing skin. Some face cloths are coarse and are ideal for exfoliating the skin, while others are soft and ideal for drying. 

As with many skincare products, there is no “best choice” for everyone. The most critical factor will be how each fabric affects the individual’s skin.

The cloth used to clean the face should be soft enough not to harm the skin when the face is being washed. The experience should be gently exfoliating rather than feel like a harsh scrub.

Muslin has become a popular choice, and for good reason. The fabric is light, thin, and 100% cotton. This makes it soft, easy to clean, and durable. Because of its extra-light nature, it is also ideal for travelling.

Although muslin has earned an excellent reputation, some people do find that the thin fabric makes it difficult to get a good grip when washing the face. This becomes especially problematic when the fabric is also being used to clean the face of products like make-up, sunscreen, or cleanser.

The face flannel might not be as soft as muslin cloth, but it is softer than towels designed for the whole body. Care needs to be taken when buying a flannel and the fabric should be felt and examined, for suitability for the more sensitive parts of the body.

Despite being an older choice, they continue to work well for many people, and the slightly coarser texture makes exfoliation easier. However, while some have preferred this, others have found the fabric too harsh for their faces. For some users, face flannels provide enough texture for exfoliation without needing a separate scrub.

A microfibre face cloth is another option. The weave in the fabric makes them very spongy and soft, with open spaces in the fibres that aid in drawing out a skin’s impurities.

For faces that need a gentle but firmer grip on the skin, a microfibre face cloth is certainly a good choice. These cloths even make cleaning easier, as the cloth itself does a great deal of the work.

The cloth should be dampened with warm water. This water should be around the same temperature as comfortable bathwater, then used to slowly wipe the face. As the face is being cleaned, the cloth should be rinsed, so that the particles are removed and not simply moved around.

Avoid rubbing the face too firmly or stretching the skin. The cloth makes a big difference, so gentle but firm wipes will work best. 

Unlike other towels that may be washed and changed every several days, face cloths should be rinsed and placed in the washing hamper after every use. This means that even the towels used to dry the face should be used only once before washes.

In order to comfortably accommodate this, it is advisable to keep a small stack of face towels. The exact number will depend on how often they are washed and ready to be reused, and how many times the face is washed over the course of a given day. Households caring for young children may also keep baby face washers separately from cloths used by adults. A men's face towel follows the same care routine as other face cloths: rinse it after use and place it in the washing hamper.