The Best Dish Towels

The best dish towels are absorbent, durable, and easy to clean. They’re also thick without being bulky so that they can double as pot holders. We chose two cotton winners. The Williams Sonoma Classic Stripe Towels have a strong basket weave that easily soaks up big spills and effortlessly releases stains. The Now Designs Ripple Kitchen Towel, Set of 2 are supersoft and exceptionally absorbent. We also picked a favorite linen towel—the LINENVIBE Pure Linen Tea Towels for Kitchen, Set of 2. These rustic towels are quick-drying and great for shining glassware and other delicate tasks.

Types of Dish Towels

Dish towels work hard in our kitchens. They dry our hands and dishes, sop up spills, cover bowls of dough as they proof, act as makeshift pot holders, and much more. There are many styles, but most dish towels are made from cotton, linen, microfiber, or a blend of two or more materials. For this story, we narrowed down our lineup to include towels made from 100 percent cotton or 100 percent linen so we could note any key distinctions between the two materials

There is no one “best” material. Understanding the pros and cons of each makes it easier to pick a towel that suits your needs. 

• Cotton is soft, durable, and versatile. However, cotton towels—particularly if they’re very thick and plush—can take a while to dry, so they need to be hung carefully to air-dry between uses. They can also be prone to linting and pilling. 
• Linen is durable and, unlike cotton, dries quickly. But linen towels tend to be pricey because it takes more time and effort to turn the raw materials into a finished product. Linen is also not as soft as cotton and can feel scratchy for the first few uses. 
• Microfiber, a synthetic material derived from plastic, is relatively inexpensive, supersoft, and great for drying or shining delicate glassware. A huge downside of microfiber is that it can melt when exposed to high heat, and since we often use dish towels to handle hot pots, we excluded this material from our lineup, focusing instead on cotton and linen towels.

Regardless of material, we found that all the dish towels in our lineup had a couple of things in common. First, they all shrunk during testing. The fibers are stretched tight during manufacturing and then loosen and shrink back to their original state after washing. You can also buy preshrunk towels, where manufacturers preemptively shrink the material to reduce shrinkage when laundered at home. However, none of the towels shrunk an unacceptable amount. 

Second, most towels undergo some form of finishing treatment at the factory to make them more durable, uniform, or lint resistant...