Most linen disputes are not really about quality. They are about a specification that was never written down properly, so the first delivery and the fourth were made to different assumptions — and nobody can point at a document that says which one was right.
If you buy bed linen for a hotel, a hospital or a hostel, these are the lines worth putting on the order.
1. Fibre and blend ratio
State it exactly: 100% cotton, or the precise blend — 52/48 polycotton reads very differently from 80/20 in both hand and wash life. Polycotton and microfiber resist shrinking and wrinkling better than pure cotton and hold printed colour well, but they trap heat and breathe less. Pure cotton is more comfortable in a tropical room and softens with every wash. Neither is simply better; they answer different briefs.
2. Weave
Percale or sateen, named explicitly. For high wash-cycle institutional linen, percale in good yarn is usually the right construction — it breathes and it launders honestly. Sateen belongs in suites and in retail sets.
3. GSM, and thread count second
GSM — grams per square metre — describes how much cloth you are actually buying, and it is the harder number to fake. Fix it in writing before production opens. Treat thread count as a secondary descriptor rather than the headline; beyond about 400 it is frequently inflated by counting plies.
4. Finished size, and the shrinkage allowance
Almost every "the sheets are too small" complaint is a shrinkage allowance that was never agreed in writing.
State the finished size you expect after first wash, and agree the allowance the manufacturer is cutting to. Cotton moves. A sheet cut to exactly the specified size will not be that size in six weeks, and everyone knew that except the document.
5. Shade references, retained
Whites are not one white. If your property mixes deliveries from different months on the same floor, the eye will find the difference instantly under corridor lighting. Ask that a physical shade reference is retained against your account and that repeat orders are matched to it — not to whatever the current batch happens to be.
6. Hem, stitch and label
Specify hem depth and stitch type. Corners and hems are where institutional linen fails first, and they are cheap to get right at the point of manufacture and expensive to fix afterwards. If you need a woven label or a property mark, say so before cutting, not after.
7. Packing and delivery format
Cartons, bales or retail-ready sets; how many pieces per pack; whether housekeeping needs them counted in dozens. This sounds trivial until the first delivery arrives packed the wrong way and someone spends a day re-counting.
The short version
Fibre and blend · weave · GSM · finished size plus shrinkage allowance · retained shade reference · hem and stitch · packing format. Seven lines. They convert an order into a specification, and a specification is the only thing that makes the second delivery match the first.
We keep these references on file for every account, which is why a repeat order does not require the conversation to happen twice. If you are drawing up a tender or a supply schedule and want a sample specification to work from, ask us — we will send one.
