How Often Should You Dry Clean a Suit?

If you own a decent suit, there is a good chance you are cleaning it too often. It feels like the responsible thing to do, drop it at the dry cleaner after every few wears to keep it sharp. But ask a tailor and you will hear something that surprises most people: dry cleaning a suit too often does more harm than good.

So how often should you actually dry clean a suit, and what should you be doing the rest of the time? Here is the honest answer, straight from how the trade looks after its own cloth.

The short answer

For a suit you wear normally, with no visible stains or lingering smells, two to three times a year is plenty. If you want to think in wears rather than months, that is roughly every three to four wears for a regularly used suit, and once a season for one you only wear occasionally.

The exact number depends on the fabric and how hard you wear it, but the headline is the same for almost everyone: far less often than you think.

Why cleaning too often actually damages a suit

This is the part most people never hear. Dry cleaning uses solvents, heat and pressing, and while that is gentle on the fabric now and then, doing it constantly takes a toll. Over time, frequent cleaning strips wool of its natural oils, which leaves the cloth looking duller, feeling stiffer and wearing out faster.

It is a genuine irony: the suit you “look after” by cleaning it every couple of weeks often wears out quicker than the one that is brushed and aired between wears and only cleaned when it needs it. A well-cared-for wool suit can last ten years or more. Most do not, simply because they are over-cleaned.

How often, by fabric

Different cloth copes differently, so use this as a rough guide for a regularly worn suit:

• Pure wool and worsted wool — every 4 to 6 wears. Wool is naturally odour and wrinkle resistant and needs cleaning least.
• Wool-blend — every 3 to 4 wears.
• Cotton and linen — more often, every 1 to 4 wears, as they crease and mark more easily.
• Silk — every 2 to 3 wears, and always professionally, as it is delicate.

Always check the care label too. A plain circle means dry clean only, and a crossed-out circle means do not dry clean at all.

What to do between cleans (this matters more than the clean)

Here is the secret the best-dressed men already know: what you do between dry cleans affects how your suit looks and lasts far more than the cleaning itself. Four simple habits do most of the work:

• Brush it after every wear. A soft, natural-bristle brush lifts dust and debris before it works into the weave. This single habit does more for a suit’s life than anything else.
• Rest it between wears. Wool needs time to breathe and recover its shape, so leave at least a day, ideally longer, between wears. Never wear the same suit two days running.
• Steam out creases. A quick steam refreshes a suit and drops out wrinkles without the stress of dry cleaning. It also sees off light mustiness.
• Spot-clean marks quickly, but gently, and leave anything stubborn or on delicate fabric to a professional rather than rubbing it in.

Rotate between two or three suits and care for them like this, and you will be reaching for the dry cleaner far less often.

When your suit does need cleaning

Clean your suit when it genuinely needs it, rather than on a fixed schedule:

• There is a visible stain you cannot lift yourself.
• There is a smell that is still there after a day or two of airing.
• It is heading into long-term storage, moths are drawn to dirty wool, not clean wool, so always clean before you put a suit away for the season.
• You have a big event coming up and want it looking its sharpest.

One important rule: always clean the jacket and trousers together, even if only one looks dirty. Cleaned separately, they fade at slightly different rates and, over a year or two, stop matching.

Never machine wash a suit

It should go without saying, but a structured suit should never go in a washing machine. Water and heat shrink wool, distort the shape and can ruin the inner canvas that gives a jacket its structure. A suit is built to be dry cleaned and pressed, not washed. If it needs more than a steam, it needs a professional.

And if your suit no longer fits quite right, after a change in weight, say, that is a job for a tailor rather than a cleaner. Our alterations and repairs service can take it in, let it out or adjust the fit so a suit you already own feels new again.

Keep your suit sharp in Ilford

When your suit does need cleaning, it is worth choosing a cleaner who treats it properly, cleaning and pressing it by hand rather than rushing it through with the week’s washing. At Ilford Dry Cleaners, we clean and press suits individually so they come back crisp and ready to wear, and we handle shirts too, so you can keep your whole work wardrobe sharp with our shirt service.

Pop into 85 Ilford Hill or call 07774 694552, and ask about free collection and delivery on orders over £100 across Ilford and the surrounding areas.