Yoga Mats Guide
How to Wash a Yoga Towel
A mat towel has one job and one enemy. The job is grip; the enemy is fabric softener, which coats the fibers that do the gripping and does not wash back out.
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The short answer
Machine wash a yoga towel on its own in cold or warm water with a normal detergent, no fabric softener and no dryer sheets, then line dry or tumble on low. Wash it after every sweaty session, not weekly. That is the whole method.
The one rule to take seriously is the softener one. Everything else on this page is a refinement; softener is the thing that turns a grippy towel into a slide, and it does it in a single wash.
Why softener is the enemy
A mat towel grips in one of two ways. Either it is a microfiber weave that grips once it is damp, or it has thousands of small silicone or rubber nubs printed on the underside that bite into the mat. Fabric softener and dryer sheets work by depositing a thin waxy coating on fiber surfaces. That coating is exactly what makes a bath towel feel soft, and it is exactly what stops a microfiber towel from wicking and a silicone nub from gripping.
The frustrating part is that it accumulates and it does not simply rinse away. One softener wash makes a towel noticeably worse; several make it useless as a mat towel while it still looks perfect. If a towel has gone slippery and you cannot think why, this is almost always the reason — and the same mechanism is behind half the complaints in why is my yoga mat slippery.
The same logic rules out wool dryer balls treated with anything scented, scent boosters, and the "softening" detergents that bundle a conditioner into the detergent itself. Plain detergent only.
The routine, step by step
Two details worth adding. A brand-new towel usually grips better after its first wash than straight out of the packet, because manufacturing finishes rinse off — so wash it before you judge it. And if the towel is genuinely soaked after a heated class, rinse it in the sink when you get home rather than leaving it in a bag until laundry day.
How often? After every session where you sweated into it. A mat towel is underwear, not outerwear: it sits between you and a surface you put your face on, and the mat underneath it needs wiping on a different schedule entirely.
By towel type
| Towel type | Wash | Dry | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microfiber with silicone nubs | Cold or warm, alone, plain detergent | Line dry or tumble low | High heat hardens the nubs |
| Plain microfiber mat towel | Cold or warm, plain detergent | Line dry or tumble low | Softener kills the wicking |
| Cotton hand or sweat towel | Warm, with the normal wash | Any setting | Nothing much; cotton is forgiving |
| Cotton yoga rug | Cold, gentle, on its own | Line dry flat | Shrinkage and a very long dry time |
The care instruction a maker prints on the label always wins over this table. Manduka and Gaiam both publish care guidance for their mat towels, and it is short enough to read once.
The picks
The towels this routine is written for
Rescuing a slippery mat
Manduka Yogitoes Skidless Mat Towel
The fix for a slippery mat you otherwise like. Silicone nubs hold it to the mat, and the top grips harder the wetter it gets.
$72.00Amazon#ad · Price as of November 3, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure for the link to Manduka Yogitoes Skidless Mat Towel
A hot room and a light bag
Manduka eQua Mat Towel
A suede-feel microfiber towel with no grip dots underneath. It holds your hands the moment they are damp and it packs down to nothing, which is why it travels better than a nubbed towel.
$46.00Amazon#ad · Price as of November 3, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure for the link to Manduka eQua Mat Towel
A first towel
Gaiam Grippy Yoga Mat Towel
A microfiber top on a grippy backing, sized to a standard mat and sold as an accessory rather than a second mat. The least you can spend and still get a towel that stays where you put it.
$34.98Amazon#ad · Price as of November 3, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure for the link to Gaiam Grippy Yoga Mat Towel
Reviving a slippery towel
A towel that has lost its grip is not always finished. If the cause is softener build-up, you can strip most of it out, and the method is the same one people use on bath towels that have stopped absorbing.
- Run it through a hot-as-permitted wash with no detergent at all, twice if necessary. Most of the coating is water-soluble once there is nothing else competing with it.
- Add about half a cup of white vinegar to the rinse on one of those cycles. Vinegar cuts the residue; do not combine it with detergent in the same cycle.
- Skip the dryer entirely while you are doing this. Line dry, so you are not re-depositing anything from a sheet or a scented ball.
- Then judge it damp, not dry. A microfiber mat towel is supposed to grip once there is a little moisture in it. A towel that grips when you mist it is working.
What cannot be recovered is heat damage. Silicone dots that have gone hard, shiny or flaky after a hot tumble dry do not come back, and a backing that has shrunk unevenly will never sit flat on the mat again. That towel becomes a sweat towel and you buy a new mat towel — the towels are ranked here.
And if you are not sure you need a mat towel at all, that question has its own straight answer in do I need a yoga towel.
How we picked
Chosen on published criteria, and we say so
Most gear sites open by telling you how many hours they spent with the products. We have not used most of these, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. Every pick here is chosen against criteria we publish — grip, cushioning, size options, what buyers report after a year of use, and whether the thing is still actually sold — and every manufacturer figure on the page is labeled as the maker's claim.
Nobody pays for a place on this page, no product was supplied free in exchange for coverage, and a specification the maker does not publish is never guessed at. See the full criteria and weighting.
FAQ
Questions people ask
How do you wash a yoga towel?
Can you use fabric softener on a yoga towel?
Can you put a yoga towel in the dryer?
How often should you wash a yoga towel?
Why is my yoga towel not gripping anymore?
Related
Keep reading
Update log
What changed
- First published.
Receipts
Sources
- 1.Manduka — eQua Hot Yoga Mat Towel (material, sizes, care)
- 2.Gaiam — Grippy Yoga Mat Towel (size, materials, care)
- 3.Manduka — Yogitoes mat towels
- 4.Manduka — how to clean your yoga mat (per-surface guidance, what not to use)
- 5.Manduka — hot yoga essentials
- 6.Gaiam — product information
We have not used every product on this page, and we do not pretend otherwise. Thicknesses, materials, sizes and warranty terms are the manufacturer's published figures, shown as their claims. Anything about materials, skin or injury is linked to a source. Prices are set by Amazon and change constantly, so we never type one into the text — every figure comes from Amazon's own data, dated, and disappears rather than going stale. Read the full method.