Towels guide
How to read a towel
Four words on a towel label tell you almost everything: the weight, the fibre, the twist and the size being quoted. Three of them are usually missing.
The weight is the specification
Towels are measured in grams per square metre, and it is the one number that predicts how a towel behaves. A good range makes the ladder visible: Christy publish 450gsm for the Cirrus, 550 for the Prism, 600 for the Brixton and 730 for the Luxe, and those four numbers describe four genuinely different objects rather than four price points.
Below about 450 you have a flat towel that dries fast and dries you slowly. Between 500 and 600 is where most people are happiest. Above 700 you are into hotel territory, which feels wonderful and behaves like a small blanket.
The trade calls the 500 to 600 band the everyday weight for a reason, and the reason is the next section.
Heavier is not better, and in a British bathroom it is often worse
This is the part nobody selling towels will lead with. A heavy towel holds more water, and a towel that holds more water takes longer to dry. In a house with an airing cupboard and a hot rail that is fine. In a flat with one radiator, a 700gsm towel used at eight in the morning is still faintly damp at eight the next morning, and a towel that never fully dries is the towel that starts to smell after a fortnight.
So the honest question is not how plush you would like your towel to be. It is how much drying capacity your bathroom actually has. Buy the weight your home can dry, and the towel you bought will be the towel you enjoy.
Egyptian cotton is a postcode, not a grade
The phrase is on a great many labels and it is doing much less work than it appears to. It describes where the cotton grew. It does not describe the staple length, the spinning, the finishing or the weight, which are the things that decide whether a towel is any good, and it carries no minimum standard on its own.
What a meaningful version looks like: Soak & Sleep state 700gsm and that the fibre is accredited by the trade body for Egyptian cotton, so there is a specific claim behind the words. A page that says Egyptian cotton and gives no weight is asking you to take the geography on trust and nothing else.
Turkish cotton carries the same caveat and the same upside. Christy's Luxe names it as long staple, which is the detail that matters: longer fibres mean fewer loose ends, so the towel sheds less in its first month and softens rather than roughens with washing.
- Soak & Sleep state a weight and that the fibre is accredited by the trade body rather than only named. Soak & Sleep
- The Luxe names its cotton as long staple. Christy
Combed and low-twist do more than the fibre's name
Two pieces of processing vocabulary are worth recognising. Combed means the short fibres were taken out before spinning, which is why a combed cotton towel stays smooth instead of pilling; Christy state it on both the Brixton and the Cirrus.
Low-twist is the more interesting one. Twisting the yarn less leaves the fibres open, so the towel absorbs faster and feels fluffier at a lower weight than a tightly twisted yarn would need. The White Company build their Hydrocotton range that way, which is how a 21 pound towel can feel better than something heavier and dearer.
If you only learn to spot one thing on a label, spot this pair. They tell you about the making, and the making is where the difference between two 600gsm towels lives.
- Christy state combed cotton on the Brixton and the Cirrus. Christy
- The White Company build the Hydrocotton range with low-twist yarn for absorbency and loft. The White Company
A waffle towel is not a thin towel
Waffle weave looks like a compromise and is actually a different strategy. The honeycomb holds air and surface area in the structure of the cloth rather than in a deep pile, so it dries you with far less material and then dries itself in hours. Secret Linen Store's waffle is 390gsm, which on the ladder above reads as flimsy and in use does not.
It is the right answer for a small bathroom, a gym bag or a boat, and the wrong answer if being enveloped is the point of a towel for you. Buying one as a second set is the cheapest upgrade in this category.
- The waffle towel is specified at 390gsm. Secret Linen Store
You are almost certainly being quoted the face cloth
Every range here is sold in four sizes at four prices: face cloth, hand towel, bath towel and bath sheet. The price a listing shows first, and the price a search result carries, is nearly always the smallest of the four.
When we priced this category the first figures we read were twelve pounds, ten pounds, six, eight, three pounds forty and, at one retailer, one pound. Every one of those was a face cloth. Our own listing is priced on bath towels throughout so the comparison means something; when you shop elsewhere, find the size selector before you believe the number.
What a connoisseur actually does
Decide the weight from your drying capacity rather than your aspirations. Look for combed or low-twist before you look at the fibre's nationality. Treat an unstated weight as a missing specification rather than a neutral one. Buy one waffle set for the gym bag and the guest room. And always, always check which size the price refers to.
Do that and you will spend less than the person buying the thickest Egyptian cotton towel in the shop, and you will have better towels.
Towels we have judged for this
Researched 2026-10-20. Prices are what the retailer asked on that date.